KEAM: Over 2000 seats vacant after second allotment

With the third allotment of the Commissioner of Entrance Examinations (CEE) set to be delayed beyond August 20, when a case related to the admissions comes up for hearing in the Kerala High Court, it is understood that after the second allotment, over 2000 vacancies have been reported to the CEE in the engineering streams in the colleges across the state.

According to reliable sources, there are over thousand seats lying vacant in the merit category of private self-financing engineering colleges after the second allotment by the CEE. In the government, aided and government self-financing engineering colleges, however, altogether there are nearly 1000 seats lying vacant waiting for the third allotment from the CEE.

According to the present schedule, the CEE will make the third allotment only to the government, aided and government self-financing engineering college seats. It includes 35 percent management seats of the government self-financing colleges. However, the Kerala High Court has issued an interim order preventing the self-financing engineering managements from filling the merit quota seats that fall vacant after August 14, on their own. If the court sticks to this position in the final order, when the case comes up for hearing on August 20, then the whole process will veer towards a new direction.

Then the CEE will have to make allotment to the private self-financing engineering colleges and the court order will sound the death-knell of some of the key provisions of the self-financing agreement between the engineering managements and the government.

However, several students who have already secured admissions under KEAM in private self-financing colleges but are desirous of securing admissions now in Cusat at its fourth allotment on August 18 have landed in a quandary. This peculiar situation has arisen with so many BTech seats falling vacant at Cusat after its third allotment, for the first time in its history. As per a contentious clause in the agreement between the government and self-financing engineering managements, those who want to get a Transfer Certificate from a private self-financing engineering college, will have to remit the entire course fee for four years to get the same.

Their only hope now rests on a favourable final verdict of the Kerala High Court on the case on another clause of the agreement posted to August 20.