CET row: Govt to submit review petition or appeal 

BENGALURU: Higher Education Minister Dr C N Ashwath Narayan on Monday said the government is planning to submit a review petition or an appeal, challenging the recent High Court order regarding the CET repeaters’ petition.

Following the High Court order on Saturday, which quashed the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) note, stating that the 2021-22 qualifying examination marks would not be considered in the ranking of CET repeaters in 2022-23, Narayan said a decision will be taken on what to do next. He convened a meeting with legal experts and higher education officials on Monday, where he said they will decide whether to submit a review petition or appeal before the single-judge bench which passed the order.

“Those who approached court have adhered to a technical point. Instead, they should have understood that last year, the decision was taken in view of the pandemic. If the earlier order of the High Court is implemented, it will hamper 1.5 lakh students. If the PU marks of last year’s students is taken into consideration, the ranking secured by students of this year will go down significantly. Since examinations were not held last year due to the pandemic, all students were passed based on their SSLC and PU I marks. This resulted in more students securing over 90-95 per cent marks,” he said.

The High Court on Saturday said the decision to consider PU marks for other undergraduate courses, but not for engineering and technical courses, was discriminatory, arbitrary as well as unfair and unreasonable to the candidates. The High Court also said the KEA’s failure to inform repeaters of the decision beforehand had also prevented them from the opportunity to retake their qualifying examination.

“We don’t have any sort of dissatisfaction towards students of the last year. We want to resolve the situation in a fair manner within the time limit. Steps will be taken to complete the counselling process before September 30,” the minister said.