SC order: Govt will lose good chunk of seats

BANGALORE: The Karnataka government will lose a large chunk of medical, dental and engineering seats as a result of the Supreme Court''s 50:50 seat sharing formula between the government and the managements.
According to preliminary calculations, the government will lose 398 medical seats, 304 dental seats and 7,144 engineering seats to private college managements.
As per the seat matrix drawn up on the basis of Karnataka High Court''s 75:25 seat sharing formula between government and managements, the Common Entrance Test (CET) Cell allotted a total of 1,903 medical seats, 1,289 dental seats and 28,613 engineering seats.
Now this has been reduced to 1,505 medical seats including 340 seats in government medical colleges, 985 dental seats including 51 seats in the lone government dental college and 21,469 engineering seats including 930 government seats and 3,185 seats in aided colleges.
"The new medical, dental and engineering seat matrices should be drawn up on the basis of the number of seats available to the government and the managements. The seat matrices will be readied at the earliest," officials told The Times of India.
With the government cancelling the admission process and deciding to order fresh counselling, candidates who fail to make it to the 50 per cent government quota in the order of merit will lose their seats in the fresh round. Also, non-Karnataka category candidates are expected to lose their seats as the government quota is expected to cater to "local needs".
"We hope the managements volunteer to surrender ten per cent of the seats to the non-Karnataka category candidates. Otherwise, the state''s image will suffer as the government will find it difficult to accommodate non-Karnataka category candidates in its 50 per cent share," officials said.
Private college managements affiliated to the consortium of medical, engineering and dental colleges (COMED) are holding a crucial meeting on Monday to finalise modalities about admission to its 50 per cent quota seats.