Karnataka's Higher Education Minister Dr M C Sudhakar
Credit: DH Photo/ S K Dinesh
Bengaluru: Karnataka's Higher Education Minister Dr M C Sudhakar said on Friday that the government suspects "a big racket" involved in blocking engineering seats with authorities deciding to pursue a criminal case against Internet Protocol (IP) addresses that were used during the admission process.
"This is rampant in a few top colleges. We definitely suspect a big racket behind it. We want to put an end to such a criminal malpractice and send out a strong message to those involved," Sudhakar said at a news conference.
Many seats under the subsidised CET quota were selected during the admission process conducted through the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA).
However, at the end of the process, students who chose the seats did not report to their colleges. This freed up those seats, making them fall into the management quota for which colleges are allowed to charge exorbitant fees.
Sudhakar said there is suspicion over seats in the following colleges: BMS College of Engineering (92 seats), Akash Institute of Technology (82), New Horizon College of Engineering (52), Vivekananda Institute of Technology (45), Dayanand Sagar College of Engineering (34), Sir M Visvesvaraya Institute of Technology (32) and MVJ College of Engineering (31).
At this stage, the government cannot act against colleges, Sudhakar said. "The role of colleges needs to be investigated. We can't issue notices without having some proof," he said.
The KEA, which had issued notices to more than 2,300 students, has now identified the IP addresses that were operative for multiple registrations.
"Authorities have collected the IP addresses relating to top colleges where seats in sought-after courses were selected by students. But the students did not report to those colleges where seats were selected. Based on what's prima facie, we are filing a complaint," Sudhakar said.
The minister specified that subjecting all 2,300-odd students to an investigation might mislead the probe. "Hence, we've listed out the IP addresses," he said.
According to Sudhakar, seat-blocking is being suspected in courses such as Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and so on. He pointed out that many students lost seats because of such fraudulent activity, which "should be prevented".
Suspecting foul play in the past as well, the KEA is verifying the CET 2023 seat allotments. "We feel it was going for several years. The same thing happened last year. KEA is digging into that also," he said.