The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Varsities to allot 40 p.c. seats to students from local colleges

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jun 25, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Varsities to allot 40 p.c. seats to students from local colleges

Rasheed Kappan

PGCET likely from July 20; University of Mysore to coordinate it

55 p.c. seats reserved for students from other universities in the State
Five per cent of seats to be set aside for all-India quota

BANGALORE: Clearing the decks for the Post Graduate Common Entrance Test (PGCET) for postgraduate degree courses in the State universities, the Inter-University Board (IUB) on Sunday decided to reserve 40 per cent of the seats in a university for students from its own affiliated colleges and 55 per cent for students from other universities in the State.

Five per cent of the seats will be set aside for an all-India quota.

The PGCET, likely to be held on from July 20 to July 22 in 11 subjects, will be coordinated by the University of Mysore.

According to Higher Education Minister D.H. Shankaramurthy, who chaired the Inter-University Board meeting, 20,000 applications were sold and since there was a “great demand,” 20,000 more applications would be made available. He said the entrance test would negate the students’ need to buy applications from different universities, which, till last year, conducted their own admission tests. Students had to tackle 24 entrance tests. This year, they were free of such compulsions because of the PGCET, he observed. The Minister said the PGCET will have a common syllabus for all candidates, and a common timetable spread over three days. The reservation policy will apply to the seats allotted through the PGCET, he added.

Meanwhile, university sources said that June 30 was the last date to buy/download application forms for the test. Candidates had to submit the filled-in forms on or before July 4.

On compensating private professional college managements that offered government quota seats at a subsidised fee for Common Entrance Test (CET) students last year, the State is learnt to have released Rs. 4 crore to the Higher Education Department. This money is likely to be distributed soon to the colleges concerned. It was estimated that Rs. 17 crore had to be paid as compensation.

To whether the Government proposed to implement the Jagannath Rao panel recommendation to abolish the CET, Mr. Shankaramurthy said no such report had been placed before him.

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