Karnataka private varsities offer excess engineering seats to CET students

Bengaluru: The excess of seats for engineering courses in the state has forced the private universities to surrender them to the government CET students for lower fees. According Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) sources, except Manipal University, all other private universities have voluntarily surrendered their seats, fearing they may go vacant.

According to the draft engineering seat matrix prepared by the Directorate of Technical Education (DTE), Alliance University, which has 420 seats in seven branches, has come forward to surrender 159 seats to the state government while CMR University has transferred 236 seats out of 620 to the state government.

The other universities that have transferred their seats to the government CET are Dayanand Sagar University (229 seats), Gitam School of Technology (243),  M.S. Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences (172), PES University (523),  Presidency University (741),  Rai Technology University (115), Reva University (819) and Sri Siddhartha Institute of Technology (386).

According to the sources at the state higher education department, these private universities were not part of the CET seat allotment plans. “We have not signed any agreement with these colleges over the seats. But now these universities have come forward voluntarily to surrender 40 per cent of their intake to the state government. These seats will be filled up through the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA),” he said.

According to the officials, private universities such as M.S. Ramaiah, PES University, Dayanand Sagar are in demand among the CET students. “The problem with these institutes is that for other students they have a hefty fee structure. Because of that students from outside the state are not joining them in big numbers. But for CET students they are charging fee fixed as per the consensual agreement,”  said an officer from KEA.

The KEA has published the provisional merit list of wards of J&K migrants. Ishaan Wazir has secured 4th rank in the medical stream, while another student Sourav Dhar has secured 119th rank in the medical stream.