Bengaluru: Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) office at Malleswaram turned chaotic Thursday after hundreds of parents and students turned up from across the state to cancel their engineering seats and participate in the third round of CET counselling.The issue began as KEA decided to make the cancellation process offline. In a notification, KEA said if candidates want to participate in the third round, they can cancel the seat allotted in the second round by paying the penalty of Rs 5,000 and log in to the third round and participate by paying the registration fee afresh.With this, hundreds of parents and students started streaming in early morning from all parts of the state Thursday. As the crowd began to build up, KEA allowed one batch of students inside, while others continued to wait outside.“We reached by 6am and have been waiting since then. My son was called in. We haven’t had breakfast or lunch. We have to go back by evening bus,” said Gowriamma, a mother from Koppal.As protests began outside the office, KEA quickly decided to turn the process online. It extended the date to Aug 29 and also asked the students to log in after 3pm to cancel the seat.“We paid Rs 5,000 and cancelled the seat. But we were supposed to get an OTP. Because of server issues, we did not get the OTP. We were asked to wait outside and now there is no going in or going back. We are stuck,” said a father from Bengaluru who had been waiting for around six hours.By 3.30pm, KEA officials met the protesters to address the issue. However, the students continued to be miffed about the fine. “We have to spend over Rs 2,000 to reach KEA. Then, we pay an additional Rs 5,000. How is it fair on us?” said a parent.However, KEA believes that the offline process was necessary to avoid instances of seat blocking. “Last year, students were allowed to hold on to second round seats and participate in the third round. Around 600 students misused the opportunity and did not join, thus resulting in seat blocking. We therefore decided to make cancellation a serious issue,” said H Prasanna, executive director, KEA.“We have now extended the date for cancellation to Aug 29 and have made it online,” he added.InsetAll 12k medical seats allotted in 1st roundKEA Thursday released the second provisional result of the first round of medical and dental course admissions.All 11,875 medical seats and 2,684 dental seats were allotted in the first round. A total of 478 candidates who had secured seats through the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) or in other states cancelled their KEA-allotted seats. These vacant seats were included in the fresh allotment, Prasanna said. The admission schedule will be announced after the final results are published.
