The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : CET candidates to fund Ministers’ trip

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Aug 22, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

CET candidates to fund Ministers’ trip

Rasheed Kappan

The Government has approved the arrangement

This has become possible with the elevation of the cell as a society
Karnataka Examinations Authority will bear the expenses of three dignitaries

BANGALORE: Common Entrance Test (CET) candidates will now have to pay up for the foreign visits of the Chief Minister, the Higher Education Minister and the Higher Education Secretary, thanks to the elevation of the CET Cell as a society called the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA).

It is learnt that the Government recently approved an arrangement, according to which the CET Cell (KEA) would bear the foreign visit expenditure of the three “dignitaries” from the CET Fund, now treated as the “KEA Fund.”

For the last several years, the CET Cell’s annual savings after expenses had averaged about Rs. 6 crore to Rs. 7 crore, generated to a large extent by the one lakh plus applications received from medical and engineering seat aspirants.

The KEA Fund would be audited by a chartered accountant from the next year.

Rules

KEA’s rules and bye-laws, approved on August 7 by the society’s governing council, is clear about how the foreign trip should be funded: the expenditure had to be in tune with the existing scales prescribed by the Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms (DPAR). In case of unavoidable or on-the-spot exigencies local transport in higher than entitled class and local entertainment should be allowed.

All arrangements had to reflect the “dignity and prestige” of the Government.

Sitting fee

The governing council, at its first meeting, also approved a sitting fee of Rs. 1,000 to be paid to every member, including the chairperson.

The meeting, with Higher Education Minister D.H. Shankaramurthy as chairperson, Medical Education Minister V.S. Acharya as vice-chairperson, and Principal Secretary, Higher Education, as deputy chairperson, was also attended by Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) Vice-Chancellor, Commissioner of Collegiate Education and the Directors of Medical and Technical Education as members.

Boycott

The KEA was originally designed to be an independent body comprising representatives from the Government and private professional college managements. But the managements backed off when they found that the KEA governing council was packed with government nominees, and enjoyed no autonomy.

None of the management members turned up for the council’s first meeting.

But the Government was firm about going ahead with the KEA.

Rationale

Its rationale: the CET Cell used its infrastructure and manpower to conduct admissions to undergraduate professional courses only for about six to eight months.

During the four to six months when the facility remained largely unutilised, the cell could function as a society to hold other examination-related activities of the Medical Education Department, the RGUHS or even bank recruitment boards.

The KEA was also seen as a potential centre to hold promotion-linked intra department examinations.

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