Minimum 50% must for engg, pharmacy

Posted On: April 20, 2011 10:19 am

AHMEDABAD: The state education department has finalized the rules for the admission in degree engineering and pharmacy courses for year 2011. The rules that have been framed following the recommendations of the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) will be officially announced soon.

The department officials said that Gujarat will implement the minimum 50% eligibility criteria for admission in these professional colleges. This means that students who will score 50% and above marks in physics, chemistry and mathematics in HSC (science) exams this year will be eligible for applying for admission in degree engineering and pharmacy colleges. Earlier, the eligibility criteria was only 35% marks.

Secondly, three merit lists will be declared for admission in these professional colleges. The first list will be of the students of Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Board (GSHSEB) while separate list will be prepared for students of the CBSE and ICSE and other boards.

Earlier, maximum 25 marks were carried forward into the class 12 merit of the students who opted for technical subjects in class X. This procedure has been done away with from this year, the officials said.

The management quota has been fixed at 25% seats. Here, 15% seats will be reserved as the NRI quota and 10% seats as the management quota. Of the management quota, admission on maximum five% seats can be given to students from outside the state who have not appeared for the Gujarat Common Entrance Test (GujCET).

Significantly, the AICTE had recommended that fee waiver should be given to students belonging to the economically backward sections on 10% seats. Here, while this is compulsorily followed in government colleges, the self-financed institutes do not necessarily follow suit. From this year, all SFIs would also have to give fee waiver to poor students on 5% seats.

"We have agreed to most recommendations of the AICTE especially raising the eligibility criteria to 50% as we want to improve the quality of professionals coming out of the colleges," said an education department official.

Chairman of the SFI Management Association, C L Patel said that there is a possibility that a number of seats may remain vacant due to higher eligibility.

Source: Times of India