CHENNAI: On the last day of the last session of the State Assembly, the House passed the Bill on Common Entrance Test (CET). Consequently, State Board students will be exempt from taking the CET and will be admitted to professional colleges on the basis of their Plus-Two marks. Their counterparts from the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) stream will be evaluated both on their finals marks and the CET.

That is how the State Government wants to `equalise' them for admissions in academic year 2006-07. This step may have pleased the political constituency, but confusion remains among students and parents. While the State Board students are wondering if another bout of litigation will come their way and make them appear for the CET, the CBSE students are apparently waiting for one of them to challenge the "discrimination" in court.

Big gaps

While parents and students are concerned about the immediate admission season and the connected processes, academics and analysts point to the "big gaps" and "grey areas" the Bill has not addressed. Some of them were raised by the Opposition legislators in the House, but the Government made it appear that the nitty gritty would be dealt with in the rules and processes stage by the authorities. Primary among the issues raised related to the "ranking" of students and "equalisation or neutralisation" of different "streams."

Anna University sources say the "details" are being worked out. The final picture will emerge once "certain clarifications" are obtained from the State Government. Instead of dealing with well over 1.5 lakh students for the annual Tamil Nadu Professional Courses Entrance Examination (TNPCEE), the University may have to deal with a shade over 5,000 students, mainly from the CBSE stream.

Ranking problem

But when it comes to `ranking,' there are bound to be serious problems that can lead to legal wrangles. University sources point out that a "few hundred students" could vie for just a couple of ranks, because they may all end up with say 199 out of 200 in the Plus-Two State Board examinations.

"It may be easy for the MLAs to suggest that weightage must be given to Tamil medium students or those with Tamil as the second language. But all this must stand legal scrutiny and can be insisted upon only for admission to Government colleges," a University professor, who was earlier associated with the admission process, argues.

Salem-based analyst Jayaprakash Gandhi says the whole question of the unaided self-financing colleges remains "outside the ambit of this law." He says: "It is clear that the new Act holds good only for admissions to Government and aided professional colleges, and perhaps the seats surrendered to the Government by some of the private colleges. What about the more than 225 self-financing engineering colleges, two unaided medical colleges, six self-financing dental colleges and other professional unaided colleges?" The management quota seats are a different entity altogether.

Mr. Gandhi explains that in the Board examination last year, 2,35,979 students passed out of the science group.

Of them, nine students got above 1,185 out of 1,200, coming down to 15,251 students securing above 1,100 out of 1,200 marks. The numbers will be more staggering in the mathematics group.

"Even if they consider total marks there are 311 students in one level. And if they consider major subjects, there are over 300 students in each cut off of 0.25 marks. It will be wrong to allot a rank taking into account the age or by drawing lots," he reasons.

Supreme Court ruling

Aside from the CET to be conducted by the Government authorised agency (Anna University) the Supreme Court has ruled that admissions to unaided self-financing institutions must also be done on the basis of a CET, merit ranking and a single window system.

Either the Government, or the Permanent Committee set up by it, should identify the agency or consortium to conduct such a CET.

But academics insist that a privately conducted CET is not "transparent" and there is no merit ranking or SWS after that.

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