Experts: Kaloji varsity counselling is wrong
Find fault in fixing merit list for engineering, medical seats
The Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences’ conscious decision to fill the “unreserved category” with less meritorious students led to the counselling chaos, which deprived at least 100 Telangana students of MBBS seats in the state.
Experts who dealt with the counselling process of both engineering and medical courses found fault with the KNRUHS for not fixing the merit list properly by automatically upgrading the status of the meritorious students who already took admission in the local quota and chose to not apply afresh for the subsequent phases of counselling.
Official sources told Deccan Chronicle that the top brass of the government obtained the experts' opinion independent of the feedback given by the university vice chancellor Dr B. Karunakar Reddy on why students from Andhra Pradesh were accommodated in large numbers despite these being less meritorious compared to several of their Telangana counterparts.
“The basic principle of counselling is that the 15 per cent unreserved category shall always consist of the top meritorious students from among the allottees of a particular college. It is immaterial whether they applied for first phase or subsequent phases of counselling,” said a former Osmania University engineering college professor who was involved in the team that transformed the counseling process from manual to computer-based.
Deccan Chronicle brought to fore that the university retained the status of the local students who took admission in the first phase under local quota and chose to not apply for the second phase of counselling as they already got a seat of their choice.
As a result, several lessmeritorious students from the neighbouring state got admission in the highly meritorious ‘unreserved category’ in the subsequent phases of counselling.
Significantly, certain clauses were missing in the fresh web counselling notification issued by the university on Sunday for the additional mop-up phase, leaving room for suspicion that the university has been trying for an escape route.
In earlier notifications, the university stated that that students who secured admission, joined and continuing in the course ‘who wish to slide’ can apply. But in Sunday’s notification it deleted ‘who wish to slide’ apparently to project that it gave chance to all students to apply irrespective of their choice to slide or not.
“The university cannot shirk of its responsibility of adjusting the merit order for the unreserved category on its own irrespective of the student applying for subsequent phases of counselling or opting not to apply,” said a retired official who was in charge of counselling for several years in the combined state.