MLC behind varsity seat con.

Deccan Chronicle:Wednesday, February 08, 2012.

This is yet another example of how people’s representatives misuse their office to protect the interests of private entities at the cost of public interest. Documents accessed through the Right to Information (RTI) show that it was none other than Member of the Legislative Council and vice president of the NRI Forum Karnataka, Capt Ganesh Karnik, who was general manager of NITTE Education Trust till 2006, who had stopped the State government from claiming the mandatory 25 per cent of medical seats in the Mangalore-based NITTE and Yenepoya universities for the academic year 2010-11. Due to the lobbying of Capt Karnik, CET (common entrance test) students from the State have lost 150 MBBS seats and around 30 post-graduate medical seats in these medical colleges in the last three years.

According to the MoU entered into with the State government, the two deemed universities are supposed to surrender 25 per cent of their total intake to the government CET every year. But in 2009, CET students allotted seats in these universities were forced to knock on the doors of the High Court to get admission. The universities denied them admission saying the government has no control over them. So, since the academic year 2010-11, the government is not claiming its share of seats. According to the documents assessed through RTI, both the universities were excluded from the CET seat matrix.

According to the documents, just before finalising the medical seat matrix for the year 2010-11, Capt Karnik wrote two letters to the then medical education minister Ramachandra Gowda urging him to adopt the same yardstick for NITTE University as it followed in the case of other deemed universities of the State, and thus indirectly opposed its claiming seats from the university.

In the absence of MoUs with other deemed universities, the State does not claim any seats in these institutions. It can claim seats from NITTE and Yenepoya because of the MoU, but under pressure from Capt Karnik, the government excluded both varsities from CET seat matrix.

According to the documents, then medical education secretary Mr Umesh had strongly recommended that the State enact separate legislation to ensure minimum seats for poor, meritorious students even in the deemed universities. But the government buckled under the pressure. Speaking to this newspaper, an officer of the medical education department said that if Capt Karnik was really concerned about poor students, he would have pressed the government to claim seats from all deemed universities. Instead, he forced the government to exclude these two universities from the ambit of the seat matrix.