Karnataka High Court Directs State To Consider Normalization Of Marks For Repeater Candidates: CET 2022

The Karnataka High Court in the case Karnataka Examination Authority v. Keerthana Y.H & Others observed and has accepted the revised method formulated by the state government for assigning CET rankings to repeater-students, for admission to undergraduate courses in Engineering and Technology for the academic year 2022-23.
The division bench comprising of Acting Chief Justice Alok Aradhe and Justice S Vishwajith Shetty observed and has stated that during the course of hearing, a consensus has been evolved amongst the learned counsel for the parties in respect of second method for evaluation of the marks of II PUC batch 2021 for the UGCET for the academic year 2022–2023, be made on the basis for assigning CET rankings to the students. Therefore, it is directed that the aforesaid second method shall be made the basis for assigning CET rankings and the State Government shall issue a notification accordingly.
However, the state and Karnataka Examination Authority had appealed against a single bench order which had directed the authority to redo the CET rankings for admission to undergraduate courses in Engineering and Technology. Thus, the bench has set aside the note dated July 30, 2022 by which the Authority had prescribed that the II PUC / XII standard marks obtained by the petitioners in 2021 and the same would not be considered for the purpose of CET ranking for the academic year 2022-2023.
It was observed that during the pendency of the appeals, the state of Karnataka had constituted an expert committee on 20.09.2022 to examine the possibility of drawing a methodology in calculating the qualifying examination marks of II PUC batch 2021 for the UGCET for the academic year 2022–2023.
Further, the committee after though the thorough examination of the issue for assigning CET Rankings, had recommended that after normalization, using the basis of 50% of CET marks, for determining the ranks for the covid batch students may improve their ranking and this may affect the ranking of post covid batch of students to some extent and also to safeguard the interest of post covid batch students and the seats in IT related branches in colleges as per previous years preferred selection of seats may be increased by 10%.
While disposing of the appeal, the bench clarified that the qualifying marks secured in the examination of II PUC batch 2021 for the UGCET academic year 2022–2023 shall be calculated only for the limited purpose of assigning the CET ranking and the same shall have no further effect.