Karnataka CET 2009 on April 29, 30, PU exams will be held across Karnataka between February 24 and March 6, 2009

The Karnataka Common Entrance Test (CET) 2009 examinations will be a two-day affair and will be held on April 29 and 30 reports the Indian Express. Higher Education Minister Aravind Limbavali announced the decision after the Governing Council (GC) meeting of the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) on Wednesday. “We have decided to revert to the two-day CET after two years of single-day CET for the benefit of students,” he said.

The Minister also clarified that there was no plan to scrap CET as of now. On Monday, Medical Education Minister Ramachandra Gowda had said that CET would be scrapped and making admissions to professional courses would be based on PU marks alone.Limbavali clarified that the Minister was just expressing his views and it was not a decision taken by the government. Gowda, who is a member of the GC, did not make it for the meeting due to a prior engagement in Mysore.

Decentralised counselling To facilitate the students from outside Bangalore, counselling for the Common Entrance Test (CET) will be de-centralised for the first time in 2009. Announcing this, Limbavali said that CET counselling will be held in two other locations, besides Bangalore. “The places will be decided after considering the technical aspects of the decentralized counselling,” he said. KEA Executive Director S G Hegde will submit a report on the viability of various locations at the next Governing Council meeting. According to sources, locations likely to be considered are Hubli, Dharwad, Belgaum and Gulbarga. A decision was also taken to hold discussions with managements of private engineering, medical and dental colleges on seat-sharing ratios and fee structures during the first week of December. “We hope to complete the discussions soon, and get the agreement ratified by the Supreme Court,” he added.

The Governing Council has asked KEA executive director S G Hegde and Visvesvaraya Technological University Vice-Chancellor H P Khincha to look into providing CET coaching for rural students.

A three to four-month coaching programme has been proposed, but it might not be ready for the coming year, Limbavali said. A proposal to introduce horizontal reservation of 10 per cent within the Defence Special reservation category for children of defence personnel from Karnataka was referred to the Law Department. A decision was also taken to upgrade computers
and communication equipment of the KEA.

Common timetable for I PU exams From this academic year, there will be common time-table for first year pre-university (PU) exams across the state. The Department of Pre-university Education (DPE) will also set the question paper for all districts during the February- March 2009 exams.

The I PU exams will be held across Karnataka between February 24 and March 6, 2009. Hitherto, the exams used to be held on different dates at the district-level.