BANGALORE: With only a couple of days to go for the Common Entrance Test (CET), to be conducted by the Government, the focus is still on the CET Cell, despite the sharp fall in medical, dental and engineering seats available through the test. As many as 88,000 candidates who are appearing for the test are no doubt aware of the decline in the importance of test on this score.

With six more engineering colleges joining the Consortium of Medical, Engineering and Dental Colleges of Karnataka (COMED-K), many candidates appearing for the CET have also sent applications for taking COMED-K's Undergraduate Entrance Test (UGET). The UGET is three weeks away, but the consortium has already received 48,000 applications, a majority of them from Karnataka candidates.

COMED-K has 3,540 MBBS seats, 3,160 BDS seats and about 30,000 BE seats to offer in its member colleges. Seventy-eight engineering colleges, most of which were admitting students on the basis of the CET, will fill their seats through the COMED-K. The number of B.E. seats could vary, with the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) bringing down the number of seats by 22,722 seats across the country, citing faculty shortage and lack of infrastructure as reasons. "We are working out the total seat availability, since the AICTE has reduced the number of seats in some colleges and increased the intake in some others," COMED-K Executive Secretary S. Kumar told The Hindu .

Students taking the CET will face an uphill task as the Government, as of now, has only a little over 4,700 seats to offer in the disciplines of medical, dental and engineering. Last year, over 27,000 engineering seats were available for allotment through the CET.

In 2004-05, the number of seats in the engineering stream was more than 41,000. Of this, the Government, under the CET quota, allotted nearly 27,000 seats. It had 4,340 seats in 12 colleges aided by it, of which seats were allotted to 4,169 students leaving 171 to managements.

There were 5,990 seats in 15 minority colleges, and since the managements and the Government had come to an understanding on the sharing of seats on a 50:50 ratio, it got 2,995 seats. The other engineering colleges had 30,938 seats to offer, and the Government's share was around 20,000 seats, under 65:35 ratio agreed upon. This year, the number of engineering seats available with the Government, as of now, is only 4,300, and they will be allotted through the CET.

Medical seats

The picture for the medical course is more dismal. With 25 per cent of the medical seats (under the CET) reserved for students under the all-India quota, there are only 382 seats in the four government medical colleges in Bangalore, Mysore, Bellary and Hubli. Last year, the CET Cell had 1,600 seats to allot.

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