The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday ordered issue of notice to the State government and the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) on the petitions filed by 92 dental doctors complaining of anomalies in the eligibility criteria in the selection process to fill the post-graduate/ diploma seats in dental courses.
A Division Bench comprising Justice K.L. Manjunath and Justice Raghvendra S. Chauhan passed the order on the petitions, filed by Dr. N. Anmol and others, while adjourning hearing to Wednesday.
The petitioners said the KEA depended on the All-India Post-Graduate Dental Entrance Examination 2015, conduct by the National Board of Examination, for the ranks to fill up the State government quota seats and did not conduct a separate entrance test unlike in the past.
They said the KEA, from the AIPGDEE rank list, had declared only 140 candidates as eligible for the admission though there are 250 dental seats under government quota. This was, the petitioners said, due to adoption of negative mark criteria used for selecting candidates under the all-India quota.
They said even the NBE did not negative mark for shortlisting eligible candidates for the state quota seats in the previous year but it was used only for all-India quota seats.
Due to illogical eligibility criteria, the petitioners claimed, more than 100 seats now would fall in the hands of the managements in addition to the seats already earmarked to be filled up under management quota.
The petitioners have sought a direction for either holding a separate entrance test to fill up state quota seats or adopting the criteria for eligibility without negative marks so that all the seat under government quota could be available for meritorious candidates.
