‘All vacant govt. quota seats in private engineering colleges should be allotted through KEA only’

A file photo of a CET counselling session in Bengaluru.

To curb the engineering seat blocking racket, found to be active during the 2023 and 2024 CET counselling, the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) has now requested the State government to ensure that all vacant government quota seats after the second extended round in private engineering colleges are allotted through KEA only.

KEA has now requested the State government to include this clause in the consensual agreement with private engineering colleges from next year. It has also proposed that COMED-K counselling should begin only after the first round of KEA counselling.

Presently, these seats are being handed over to these colleges and managements charge hefty fees to allot these seats. If these vacant seats are also allotted through KEA, the incentive for blocking seats in counselling will be removed from the system.

‘Students getting cheated’

“As per the Supreme Court verdict, even if only one seat remains vacant in NEET counselling, it has to be filled through KEA only. But these vacant seats are handed over to engineering colleges. However, it has been found that some colleges are cheating students and converting government quota seats into management seats by running a seat blocking scam. To prevent this, we have now recommended that the NEET procedure be adopted to engineering seat allotment as well,” said H. Prasanna, Executive Director, KEA.

Of the students who got government quota seats in the second extended round of CET-2024 counselling, 2,625 of them have not been admitted to the preferred college. Consequently, other eligible and interested students are deprived of their seats. KEA issued notices to all these students. While many had explanations like securing a medical seat, a seat outside the State. 

However, several students complained to KEA that they had not even done option entry, as they joined other courses in other states, which triggered a probe. Fifty-four of these students were found to have been allotted seats in the BMS Engineering College (Aided and Unaided), Akash Institute of Engineering & Technology and New Horizon College of Engineering.

KEA has now filed a complaint over misuse of their Login ID and passwords, after it was found that only a few IP addresses were used for option entry of these students misusing their credentials. An FIR has been registered, and a probe is on.