Clearing the air around the controversy over “unfair” rankings for KCET (Karnataka Common Entrance Test) repeaters, higher education minister Dr C N Ashwath Narayan defended the Karnataka Examination Authority’s decision to not consider the Pre-University Certificate (PUC) or Class XII marks of over 24,000 students who repeated CET citing that it would “not be fair” on students who got rankings last year only based on CET and the freshers who appeared this year.
Addressing the media, Narayan said that is no discrimination in evaluating CET rankings and Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) has not issued any guidelines on considering PUC marks for CET repeaters this year, irrespective of their boards.
“In 2021, CET rankings were based only on CET scores because the PUC exams were cancelled and students were promoted based on 45% marks of the SSLC Secondary School Leaving Certificate exam, 40% of the first PUC exam and internal marks, 10% of good behaviour and 5% grace marks. Over 1,41,000 candidates appeared for the CET exam last year and this year, over 1,71,000 candidates appeared for the exam,” the minister said.
“The only difference is that an extra 24,000 students repeated KCET this year to better their rankings. Hence, if we go on to consider their PUC marks or Class XII marks, it would be unfair on last year students whose rankings were based only on CET scores,” said Narayan, adding, the document verification process for students will commence from August 8.
Narayan also said that the Class XII marks of CBSE and ISC repeaters will be withdrawn while evaluating KCET rankings.
Devaki Nandan, a CBSE student who repeated for KCET this year, said, “I ranked around 68,000, however, after they withdrew the Class 12 CBSE result, my ranking came down to 1,48,000. This is a very inappropriate decision by the KEA. They should have considered equal evaluation for all students. Now, colleges are asking me to get a seat through management quota because of my low CET ranking. This is a very expensive quota and I cannot afford shelling out the fees.”
Parents Saturday alleged that KEA had “assured” repeaters of considering the PUC marks for CET rankings. However, Ramya S, executive director of KEA, said, “We do consider 50% CET and 50% PUC marks of all students, including repeaters. However, in 2021, PUC students were all promoted in light of the pandemic and hence we considered only the CET marks. Around 24,000 CET candidates from 2021 repeated their exams this year and we applied the same rule by considering 100% CET marks only.”
The students and parents protested and said that by not considering their PUC marks, their rankings have plummeted by a significant margin compared to last year and this has deprived the students of getting admission in good colleges. A lot of students from 2021 repeated the CET this year with the aim to better their rankings compared to the previous year.
Veerabadrappa P M, whose ward appeared for the exam, said, “If this is how evaluation is done, should the students consume poison and die? This is nothing but absolute negligence of the education department to push students out of the education system. Despite my son Ushal scoring 117 in CET, he got a rank of over 1,44,000. With such a ranking, how can he get admission in a good college?”
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