The supreme Court has allowed private engineering colleges, which have been unable to find enough candidates who cleared the Common Entrance Test (CET) to fill seats, to admit eligible 10+2 students.A bench headed by Justice Y.K. Sabharwal today passed the order while deciding a petition filed by the All India Engineering and Medical Colleges Association (AIEMCA).The court has directed the state governments to supply—within a week of the notification of the order—all such institutes with a list of candidates who appeared in the CET but were yet to be admitted to any engineering college. The colleges should give the first preference to such students, the order said.In case seats were still vacant, the colleges could admit eligible 10+2 students on merit, even though they had not taken CET, the bench said.The court made it clear that ‘‘this will be applicable only to the current academic year due to the peculiar circumstance.’’A total of 272 colleges in 19 states have vacant seats.
