Edu-leaders

Karnataka will soon be approaching the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) for the cancellation of change in the eligibility cap from 45% to 50% for engineering courses.

To present the view of the state government on this, the Principal Secretary of Higher Education Department Latha Krishna Rao will be meeting AICTE officials today. Only 60,543 candidates are eligible for engineering seats in Karnataka this year against the 71,639 last year.

The revision has its own benefits but it would affect the not-so-popular colleges that have vacant seats. Besides this, a lot of students will not be able to pursue engineering due to this.

When the eligibility for SC/ST students was raised from 45% to 40% this year, about 17,000 students could not take CET. Raising the eligibility cap to 50% may further lead to an increase in the number of vacant engineering seats in Karnataka.

Higher Education Minister V.S. Acharya said that once the AICTE approves, three new colleges will be set up in the state, including one in Bangalore.

The Karnataka Higher Court issued notices to the Department of Technical Education, the Karnataka Examination Authority, Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) and the AICTE in reply to a petition filed by a woman, Anusha, challenging the notification issued by the department of technical education and the VTU on March 21 and April 27, respectively.

These notifications said that the eligibility criteria for admission to undergraduate programmes should be altered, and therefore, electronics and computer science students would not be eligible for admission to Bachelor of Engineering courses, with specialisation in computers or electronics, in which they will also have to study physics and mathematics.