Engineering admissions: HC orders status quo

KOCHI: The High Court on Friday ordered to maintain status quo with respect to the admission process to engineering colleges until further orders. A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice J Chelameswar and Justice P R Ramachandra Menon issued the interim order, while hearing an appeal filed by Sohan Varghese of Ernakulam challenging the admission procedure. The court Kalso issued notice to the Commissioner for Entrance Examination, Higher Education Department Secretary and All-India Council for Technical Education. The case will be considered by the court again on August 22.The petitioner challenged a new condition in the prospectus for admission to engineering courses which says the marks obtained in the qualifying examination would also be computed while preparing the ranklist for admission.The petitioners submitted that there is a discrimination among the candidates opting for engineering and medical courses. For almost three decades the admission to engineering colleges in the state were made on the basis of entrance examination. But this year a new system was introduced as per a government order.  The petitioners further pointed out that in the case of admissions to medical courses the marks obtained in the qualifying examination is not counted.They further submitted that the Controller of Entrance Examination did not have any power to insert a new condition in the prospectus. “The system introduced for admissions to engineering colleges is unconstitutional as it is against the AICTE regulations,” they said.“The condition was introduced without the support of the statutory law in this regard. It went against the dictum of the Supreme Court that admissions should be made on the basis of the evaluation of relative merits through an entrance examination that should be open to a qualified candidate throughout the country,” the petition said.Another disturbing aspect is that even while preparing the ranklist adopting the noramalisation method, some grave errors occurred in the published list.The parents of the CBSE/ISC students through their coordinator Dr Sanilkumar, submitted a detailed representation to the state government pointing out the irregularities in adding qualifying marks for admission to engineering colleges. But so far no decision was taken, the petition said.