The government is going to challenge the Karnataka High Court order of Saturday on the CET-2022 rank list.
Sources said the decision had been taken to protect the interests of II PU-2022 students, as redoing the rank list as per the single judge order would adversely affect their ranks.
Higher Education Minister C.N. Ashwath Narayan discussed the issue with department officials and legal experts on Monday.
Speaking later, the Minister said: “This year’s students will be unfairly treated by the High Court’s decision to release the rank list considering the II PU marks of 24,000 candidates who have written CET this year after passing PU in 2020-21. Therefore, it will be challenged in court.”
“The government will decide whether to file a review petition before the single judge who passed the order on Saturday or to file an appeal before a Division Bench.
“If the High Court order is followed, around 1.5 lakh students who have written CET for the first time this year will suffer and the rank list will change a lot. Those who have approached the court are stuck on some technical point. They should have properly understood the decision taken in the wake of COVID-19 last year,” Dr. Ashwath Narayan said.
“We are not upset about the students of last year. We resolved this problem without causing injustice to anyone,” he said, while assuring that everything would be done within the stipulated time frame.
The High Court had quashed the CET-2022 engineering rankings and directed the government and the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) to redo the ranks by taking II PU and CET-2022 marks in 50:50 ratio, even for the petitioner students who had passed II PU in 2021, on Saturday. The KEA, while allotting ranks, had taken into account only CET ranks for repeaters this year as only the CET marks were considered for students in CET-2021 for all students. The marks of only CET were considered last year as no examination was conducted for II PU and the marks awarded to students were based on a specially formulated scheme.
Rashmi. M., Principal Secretary, of Higher Education; P. Pradip, Commissioner of Collegiate and Technical Education; and Ramya, Executive Director of KEA, and legal experts were present at the meeting.
