The Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) has announced that the Common Entrance Test (CET) counselling and National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) counselling will be held together like previous years but the process will be delayed this time.
This came amid rumours that the KEA will go ahead with the counselling for admissions to engineering and other professional courses as the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) counselling has been delayed. The CET results were announced on June 1 and the NEET results on June 4. However, the NEET results have been disputed and challenged in the Supreme Court.
The Union government told the Supreme Court on Thursday that grace marks given for 1,563 NEET candidates will be scrapped and these candidates will be given an option to take a retest on June 23, and the revised results for NEET 2024 will be announced on June 30.
Rumours and fears
“Thousands of students are ranked high enough to get both medical and engineering seats. If CET counselling is held first and admission to engineering courses is completed, then if we get a medical seat in the NEET counselling, which will be held later, the fee will not be refunded immediately, if we cancel admission to the engineering course. This will cause severe problems to students,” said Monica C.G., who has heard rumours of CET counselling being held first.
However, Prasanna H., Executive Director, KEA, speaking to The Hindu, appealed to the students not to heed rumours. “In the interest of students, we have decided to conduct CET and NEET counselling simultaneously, so that students will have a fair choice between medical and engineering courses. We are still awaiting the seat matrix of both engineering and medical courses apart from other allied courses, apart from the NEET counselling schedule from the National Testing Agency (NTA). The counselling this time will be delayed by a few weeks,” he said.
Given that the final NEET results will be announced only on June 30, following which the NTA will conduct three rounds of counselling for 15% national government quota medical seats and then will release the seat matrix of the remaining seats for State-level counselling, CET and NEET counselling sessions are expected to be held only in July. This will help students who aspire to get medical seats but don’t, to opt for good engineering courses in leading colleges.
Meanwhile, the National Medical Commission is yet to approve the seat matrix of medical, dental, nursing, and other allied health science courses in the State for 2024-25.
The All-India Council for Technical Education is also yet to approve the seat matrix for engineering courses in the State for the coming academic year.
