With no authority heading either the Admission Overseeing Committee or the Fee Regulatory Committee, students who have picked seats across various professional courses are now in a fix as they do not have anyone to air their grievances to and get their problems addressed.
The issues they face range from getting a refund for “excess” fees collected by college managements to colleges withholding documents if they wish to change their course midway.
The post of the Admission Overseeing Committee chairperson went vacant after Anand Byrareddy, retired judge, resigned last month; no chairperson has taken charge of the Fee Regulatory Committee this year.
A student who opted for a seat in a management college offered to her during the PGCET counselling conducted by the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) earlier this month said the college had asked her to pay an extra sum of ₹40,000. “When I have got the seat on merit, why shoulds I pay for it. We need an authority who will immediately address our concerns during the admission process,” she said.
A parent noted that although the Admission Overseeing Committee had passed an order that an engineering college should refund ₹35,000 to them after they submitted a written complaint, the college is yet to act on this. “The college management is saying that only orders issued by either the Higher Education Department or the Visvesvaraya Technological University are binding on them,” the parent said.
Written complaints
Ujjwal Kumar Ghosh, Executive Director of the KEA, said if students submit written complaints, they would be forwarded to the government to decide the next course of action.
“We have, however, written to the government after the resignation of the chairman of the Admission Overseeing Committee and we will soon take up the matter with the government,” Mr. Ghosh said.
