Poor meritorious quota scrapped for CET-2011

The Karnataka state higher education department is not likely to continue with the poor meritorious quota in Common Entrance Test (CET) 2011.The poor meritorious quota has been around for two years and has helped close to 20,000 poor meritorious students to get admitted to undergraduate engineering courses.

According to reports, “It is necessary for the government to remove the quota to accommodate the demands of the private professional college managements over the fee structure."The poor meritorious quota had been introduced in CET 2009 only for undergraduate engineering courses. Students with up to Rs2 lakh family income were entitled for seats under the quota on payment of an annual fee of Rs18,000, as against Rs30,000 fee for government quota seats. The government paid the remaining fee as subsidy towards the quota.

The increasing demand of fees by the private managements is discouraging the government to undertake any such responsibility. The government is now considering to scrap the poor meritorious quota to make the colleges agree to drop their demand in terms of fees hike.