The Karnataka High Court order of Saturday on CET-2022 repeaters (students who had passed II Pre-University Course in 2021 and had appeared for the entrance test this year) will mean upsetting the engineering ranks which were published by the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) on July 30.
The High Court quashed the CET-2022 engineering ranking and directed the State government and the KEA to redo the ranking by taking II PU and CET-2022 marks in 50:50 ratio even for the petitioner-students who passed II PU in 2021. The KEA, while allotting ranks, had taken into account only CET marks for repeaters.
A total of 2.1 lakh students had appeared for the CET and 1.71 lakh students were declared eligible for engineering courses and assigned ranks. Among them, around 26,000 are repeaters.
Now, both the State government and the CET-2022 rank holders (freshers of II PUC 2021-22) are planning to challenge the Saturday’s order.
Abhishek, a student from Hubballi, argued that treating them on a par with repeaters was unfair. He told to The Hindu, “I got 20,300th rank in the CET-2022 for engineering courses. According to the court order, if the KEA redoes the ranking, my place will change. Due to COVID-19 pandemic, those who wrote II PU exam in 2021 did not face the exam the way we did. The government declared the results on the basis of marks in Class X, I PUC, practical exam marks and also attendance. Additionally, they also got around 15% grace marks. Compared to us who wrote the full-fledged exam, they got higher scores in Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics. They also took one additional year to prepare for CET-2022, but we got only one-month time.”
He argued that the court order was a major setback for their efforts. “We have no choice but to challenge the order,” he said.
C.N. Ashwath Narayan, Minister for Higher Education, said, “We will discuss in detail with the Chief Minister after seeing the court order and then take an appropriate decision.”
