Bengaluru: ComedK has revoked the provisional permission for 15 students, alleged to have been involved in malpractice in three centres of Jamshedpur. This followed TCS submitting its final report on the incident.The Consortium of Medical, Engineering, Dental Colleges of Karnataka (ComedK), which holds the ComedK UG Entrance Test (UGET), had barred 36 students from participating in the counselling process over suspicions of malpractice. These students were suspected to have received external help for the test through the invigilators at the three centres.ComedK asked the students to present themselves physically to respond to ComedK on the incident. Nine students appeared initially. ComedK formed a committee consisting of top college principals who decided to give them provisional permission to participate in the counselling process. The committee said there was no conclusive evidence to implicate the candidates’ involvement.Later, 11 more students appeared before ComedK, taking the total number to 20. Meanwhile, TCS, the technology and assessment partner of ComedK, submitted its final report on the incident.Based on the final report, ComedK has given a clean chit to five students, citing that it was only circumstantial early suspicion on them. The other 15 students have been sent a second show-cause notice that the earlier provisional permission given to participate in counselling has been withdrawn.“The students need not physically appear before ComedK, but they have to respond via mail based on the individualised reports TCS has built for each student. They will get the final TCS report and the expert committee report on them. Their response will be submitted to another committee so that there is no element of bias in the decisions,” said Dr S Kumar, secretary, ComedK.“TCS has put the students into three categories based on the suspicion levels. These are based on their activities in the test, like the speed at which they answered the questions at the beginning of the exam, after they received the rough-work sheet and towards the end of the test, showing a burst of activity,” he added.The remaining 16 students who failed to respond to ComedK from the first day of suspension have been expelled from participating in the counselling and seat selection process.ComedK UGET, which holds the key to 32,670 engineering seats in Karnataka’s private colleges, was held on May 9 at 400 centres in 280 cities. Around 1.1 lakh (36,954 Karnataka and 73,820 non-Karnataka) candidates appeared for the computer-based test conducted in two sessions.
