Karnataka Higher Education Minister Dr CN Ashwath Narayan announced Monday that the government will challenge the recent Karnataka High Court order on the Common Entrance Test (CET) ranking by filing an appeal before the single-member bench.
The court on Saturday pronounced that the entire CET evaluation should be redone after considering 50 per cent of pre-university certificate (PUC) score and 50 per cent of CET score for repeaters.
This year, 2,10,829 candidates appeared for the CET. However, close to 24,000 CET candidates from 2021 repeated the test in 2022 in order to better their rankings this year. Some students also took a break to study for National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) 2022 and planned for CET as a backup option. The repeaters’ rank actually plummeted drastically despite scoring well in the CET compared to the freshers.
As a result, Narayan argued that the court’s decision will be unfair to the freshers and the ranks of around 1.5 lakh students would be severely impacted.
Narayan remarked that the repeaters are facing issues comprehending the technical guidelines of the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) and that they should have understood the decision taken in the wake of Covid-19 last year.
In 2021, the KEA decided to evaluate CET rankings based on 100 per cent CET score as against the usual norm of considering 50 per cent of qualifying exam (QE) or PU marks and 50 per cent of CET score.
The decision on considering only 100 per cent CET score was reached after the government promoted all the students of second PUC due to Covid-19 without conducting the examination and evaluating based on SSLC, first PU and internal assessment marks.
Following the high court order, freshers will be staging a peaceful protest Tuesday at Karnataka Examination Authority contesting the verdict of ‘re -doing’ the CET ranking.
Aditya Biradar, a KCET fresher, who has started an online petition, said: “With regard to the decision taken by the high court which is favoring the repeaters, (the high court has told KEA to consider 50 per cent board marks for the repeaters) and considering that most of the state board students are from state board and got their board marks without writing any sort of written exam it will significantly affect all the freshers CET rankings.”
Justice Krishna Kumar, who was hearing the case, called the KEA’s decision on considering 100 per cent CET score for evaluating repeaters was ‘arbitary’ and ‘discriminatory’ and quashed the notification of KEA.
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