HRDM Kapil Sibal Prefers Kerala To Join Single CET

The Union Human Resource Department Minister (HRDM) Kapil Sibal expressed hope that Kerala will accept the proposed single Common entrance test for admission to engineering and medical courses.

Several state like Haryana, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat have already agreed to the CET.

Sibal said, "West bengal has said that it would joint by 2015, Institution like NITs, IITs, IIITs and Central Universities have already agreed to be a pert of it and 98% of the deemed universities have express interest in joining the CET".

P K Abdu Rabb, Kerala State Education Minister said, "The cabinet would discuss whether to joint the CET within two weeks and communicate its decision to the centre".

The HRD ministry proposed the single CET for admission to all medical and engineering colleges across the country. The proposal was made to save students from the burden of attending too many entrance exams for admission in the same discipline.

The class 12 students in the country have been sitting for several entrance examinations annually. In India overall 14.86 lakh engineering seats in 3,393 colleges, including the 15 IITs, 30 NITs, 4 IIITs and 5 IISERs, apart from colleges in the states and union territories. For MBBS aspirants, there are 17 tests to fill 30,000 seats in 271 medical colleges across the country.

If the Kerala state were to accept the proposal, it would mean that a student cn get admission anywhere in the country for undergraduate programmes, he need not write separate exams fro each state or institution, and it cuts down the expenses on examination fees.

However, there are some drawbacks as well. For instance, will state students be able to compete against the all india population, and if class 12 marks carry weightage, what about students appearing fro state boards. The normalisation of the class 12 marks and entrance percentage could also be tricky.

Meanwhile, every child in the country will have an Akash tablet costing Rs 1,500 within the next five years, Sibal added. The Akash 2 will have a one gigahertz processor with a battery life of four hours, while Akash 3 will have a sim card.