The Hindu : Front Page : Draft bill on CET abolition in next Assembly session

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Tuesday, Nov 14, 2006
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Draft bill on CET abolition in next Assembly session

Special Correspondent

Anandakrishnan committee submits report to State Government

PHOTO: M. VEDHAN

THE REPORT: M. Anandakrishnan, chairman of the expert committee for abolishing CET, handing over the panel's recommendations to Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi at the Secretariat on Monday.

CHENNAI: The draft bill to abolish entrance examinations for professional undergraduate admissions will be tabled in the next Assembly session.

Following the submission of the Anandakrishnan committee report to the State Government on Monday, the draft bill will be discussed in the Cabinet meeting and, subsequently, in the winter session of Assembly beginning on December 4. The committee has recommended abolition of the entrance exam, a press release said.

Committee chairman M. Anandakrishnansubmitted the report to Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi and explained to the assembled gathering, including Higher Education Minister K. Ponmudi and School Education Minister Thangam Thennarasu, the process by which it had arrived at the decision. The contents of the report were not made public.

The committee was constituted on July 7 to establish a legal ground for abolishing CET. Reliable committee sources told this paper that a section of academicians and students had objected. They felt it might complicate, rather than simplify, the selection process. The committee took into account their opinion while finalising the recommendations.

The focus, from now on, will be on the guidelines framed for professional admissions next year.

From the deliberations held among the committee members in the past few weeks, schools heads speculate that the government will have to follow a normalisation process earlier followed by institutions such as the Birla Institute of Technology and Sciences, Pilani, to admit students from different Boards.

From 2005, BITS-Pilani has a student aptitude test after the Rajasthan High Court ruled that entrance tests were mandatory.

Under normalisation, the State can take the maximum mark scored in its own higher secondary Board as the base. The maximum marks secured by students of the other boards are correlated with this base, resulting in a single rank list.

However, considering the Supreme Court ruling that an entrance examination is mandatory if students come from more than one Board, it remains to be seen what measures the committee has suggested for overcoming legal hitches.

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