Kerala not to relax B Tech admission norms

Thiruvananthapuram: Education minister C. Raveendranath has reiterated the government stand that it would not allow the admission of students who have not qualified in the entrance examination in management seats of self-financing engineering colleges.   “The ball is in the court of the self-financing engineering college management association which has to take a final decision before 11 a.m. on Tuesday,”  Mr Raveendranath said  after holding talks with Kerala Self-Financing Engineering College Management Association (KSFECMA) here.
Admission will not be allowed from the rank list before the normalisation. 

The filling up of vacant seats in self- financing colleges was  not the concern of the LDF government. The association will hold a meeting on Tuesday after which it will inform the government of its  decision. It had been demanding that vacant seats should be filled by Plus-Two students who have passed the exam. But the government has said that students can be admitted only from the entrance list.

However, the authorities have been claiming that the issue will not affect the prospects of those included in the merit list. In fact,  the confusion has been created when the first allotment to the self-financing engineering colleges as well as government engineering colleges is  supposed to start on June 30 when the controversy arose on filling of vacant seats.

Earlier, the managements had softened the stand following the threat by the KSFECMA president K. Sasikumar that he would resign if the association refused to sign an agreement with the government.   The executive committee, however, rejected his resignation.  The LDF government is firm on not allowing  the managements to admit students who did not write the entrance examinations and also students who did not get the minimum 10 marks needed for qualifying in the entrance examination. 

The section which  wants the norms watered down pointed out that as many as 11,000 seats were left vacant last year  though the previous UDF government had allowed the managements to admit students who did not qualify in the entrance examinations. Around 40,000 seats will remain vacant this year if the entrance rank alone is  made the criterion, it argued.