BENGALURU: A sudden rule change in the ongoing engineering seat counselling by the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) has put thousands of students and parents in a fix who say the new rule favours only medical students. Under the new rule, anyone allotted a seat in Round 2 is forced to compulsorily take admission and even start attending classes, while still waiting for a possible upgrade in Round 3.
The situation, students say, has become more complicated due to the overlap between KCET and COMEDK counselling schedules. The deadline for COMEDK Round 2 admissions is August 28, while the mock allotment results for KCET Round 2 will be announced on August 29.
Although COMEDK has assured students that fees will be refunded if they later secure a KCET seat, the assurance offers little relief as by the time students surrender their COMEDK seats, its counselling will have to be concluded on September 2, which means the vacated seats will not return to the general pool but instead move to the management quota. “We had studied the cut-offs from the last two years and made our choices accordingly. Now, by removing the ‘accept and upgrade’ and ‘reject and upgrade’ options in Round 2, KEA has left us with no flexibility,” Raghu Nigham, a student said.
“If KEA wanted to bring in such changes, it should have been announced before counselling began,” Meghna S, another student added.
KEA Executive Director H Prasanna pointed out that the counselling process has been designed to align with the national model followed by the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC).