Karnataka clears CET Bill

The Karnataka cabinet on Friday cleared the CET Bill for admission into the professional courses for the 2006-07 academic year. The bill has been introduced in the ongoing legislature session for discussion.

The Karnataka Professional Education Institutions (Regulation of Admission and Fixation of Fee) (Special provision) Bill, 2006, is aimed at obtaining legal sanctity for the consensual agreement worked out between the state government and the private professional college managements on seat sharing.

However, the Bill does not mention the fee structure as the committee concerned is yet to finalise it.

According to the Bill, 60 per cent of the seats in private non-minority engineering colleges will be filled by the CET Cell and the remaining 40 per cent will be filled by the college authorities.

In medical and dental colleges, the seat sharing ratio will be 50:50 between the government and management.

In minority institutions, the seat sharing arrangement is 50:50 in the engineering stream and 40:60 in medical and dental stream (40 per cent to be filled by CET Cell and 60 per cent by private college managements).

In all there will be three entrance tests "" conducted by CET Cell, Comed-K and KRLM (Karnataka Religious and Linguistic Minority Professional Colleges Associations).

Once the Bill is passed in the legislature, the CET Cell's share of seats will increase by approximately 22,000 for engineering and 2,000 in medical and dental streams.

At present, CET Cell's share is a small portion - 385 in medical, 54 in dental and 4,200 in engineering in government and aided colleges.

A one-man committee headed by a retired vice-chancellor will oversee the implementation of the admission process.