Kerala HC quashes admission supervisory committee order on CET

Kochi, Jun 7 (UNI) The Kerala high court today quashed the order of the state admission supervisory committee which had directed the managements of unaided self-financing engineering colleges to admit students as per the rank list prepared on the basis of the common entrance test (CET) conducted by the Entrance Commissioner.

A division bench consisting of Justice K S Radhakrishanan and Antony Dominique, striking down the committee order dated March 21, 2007, observed that the state cannot insist that admission of students (for academic year 2007-08) to private colleges or institutions, except NRIs, shall be made only through the CET conducted by the state.

The bench noted that section 3 of the Kerala Professional Colleges or Institutions Act, 2006, which made the CET mandatory for all professional college admissions, had already been struck down by a division bench of the court earlier.

''If the state cannot enforce section 3, which had been struck down by the court, we fail to see how the admission supervisory committee, which was constituted under Section 4 of the Act, could indirectly enforce Section 3,'' the bench added.

The court also observed that the petitioner, the Kerala Self-Financing Engineering Colleges Management Association, had evolved a method of adding marks obtained in the qualifying examinations for physics, chemistry and maths with the marks obtained by the candidate in the CET.

The bench noted that the admission supervisory committee had the power, under sub-section 6 of section 4 of the Act, to supervise and guide the process of admissions adopted by the private college managements to ensure that the process devised by them was fair, transparent, merit-based and non-exploitative.

''But, once section 3 of the Act has been struck down, the admission supervisory committee cannot insist that the only safe and sure method to admit students is through the common entrance test,'' the bench added.

UNI