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Journalism of Courage
Hearing a petition filed by repeaters of the Karnataka Common Entrance Test (KCET), the high court on Thursday asked if 75 per cent of the test score and 25 per cent of the pre-university (PU) marks of the repeaters could be considered while allotting seats for professional courses.
“In all fairness to the freshers and repeaters of CET, is it possible for the government to work out a proposition where 75 per cent of the CET score and 25 per cent of PU score be considered for evaluating the rankings for the Covid-19 batch (repeaters) of KCET?” Justice Krishna Kumar proposed while adjourning the matter to August 22.
The students moved the court after the Karnataka Examination Authority published a rank list on July 30 without taking into account their Class 12 marks from 2021. The authority then explained that to consider the repeaters’ Class 12 marks would be unfair to the students who took the pre-university examinations and the entrance test in 2022.
Justice Kumar also expressed reservations about the demand for a 50 per cent weightage for Class 12 marks given that “the students have not written the PU exam and were promoted based on their Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) and internal assessment on the grounds of the pandemic in 2021”.
Objecting to the petition, the government counsel submitted, “If the marks obtained by the petitioner in 2021 was not considered applicable for the CET conducted in 2021, the question of using it in any subsequent year can hardly arise.”
Parents and students say many repeaters got low ranks despite scoring well in the entrance test and that the repeaters had no clarity on the evaluation criteria for them.
The court on August 8 observed that the document verification and counselling for admission would be based on the outcome of the repeaters’ petition.
