BENGALURU: To meet the November 30 deadline, the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) will hold counselling for engineering seats (CET) and medical seats, secured through the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), simultaneously.
KEA Director Venkat Raju confirmed to The New Indian Express that the authority will begin counselling for engineering (CET) students after the first round of NEET counselling for its all-India quota. NEET counselling begins on Tuesday and the first list of the all-India quota is likely to come out between November 6 and 12.
Under normal circumstances, counselling for engineering seats begins after the medical seats are filled. This is because, each year, a number of medical aspirants leave their engineering seats after they get a confirmation for medical seats.
This affects engineering colleges as a number of seats are left vacant as these withdrawals occur after the final date of admissions. Despite the simultaneous arrangement this year, it will be a win-win for students and engineering colleges, said Raju. "Counselling will be done in such a way that students who want to go for medical seats can opt for them, while those who, unfortunately, do not get medical seats can go for engineering," he added.
Will meet deadline, says KEA
AS part of the new system, CET students will have a mock round of option entry where they will know which college they will get into. Following two such rounds, the casual round will take place. All this will take place in between medical counselling rounds.
Raju was confident that the KEA will complete the admission process well within the All-India Council for Technical Education deadline of November 30. Classes for engineering colleges that were to start by November have been postponed for a month and will now begin by December 1.
To continue with the admission process despite the pandemic, the KEA had taken the document verification process online and sought the help of other state government departments, like revenue and social welfare, to verify the documents.
But KEA faced a hiccup with its schedule for document verification clashing with the Joint Entrance Examination and postponed the process from September 2 to September 6.