VIJAYAWADA: The online Eamcet-2018 counselling process has become a big headache to engineering college managements, officials of education department as well as candidates.
Recently, some candidate after opting for a particular course in a college under reservation were found to have changed their caste status to a lower category later by submitting declaration forms to officials. This was obviously done to secure admission to better course and better college. This perplexing fact came to light during a random check conducted by officials.
The candidate who submitted a certificate claiming to belong to BC-D category during the verification process, later switched his status to BC-A and walked away with admission in a better college. If some make false claim, it would unfairly affect the prospects of genuine candidates belonging to a BC category that enjoys greater share in seat reservation. Due to a flaw in the online counselling process, college managements and officials are drawing up plans to resolve the new confusion.
Eamcet- Admissions Convenor GS Panda Das said, “The issue came to our notice and we will withhold admission of such candidates as changed the reservation category through self-declaration forms. We wanted the online counselling process to be foolproof and we will order an inquiry and check with the other candidates.”
For the first time, the education department introduced online verification process from this year. However, right from the beginning, candidates faced a lot of trouble. The officials of APSCHE obtained the data such as Aadhaar number, and ID proof furnished by students in their Eamcet applications during the online verification of certificates, and tallied both.
When the data didn’t match, officials gave an option to the candidates to submit at the help centres self-declaration forms with details of their caste, income and proceeded with counselling.
Following this, several candidates submitted self-declaration forms detailing their caste, income and opted for courses and colleges of their choice.
But, officials failed to check whether the details given by the candidates were true or not. During a random check by an official it was noticed that a few candidates had changed their categories.
Speaking to Express, APSCHE secretary S Varadarajan said, “As of now, we have identified only one candidate who has done this for securing a seat in a top college."