Chaos at IIIT counselling

Kadapa, June 21: Chaos prevailed in the counselling conducted for students for admission into the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) here on Saturday. Several eligible students could not get seats in the counselling due to lapses in recording data. The counselling was conducted to fill 175 seats in Kadapa district, 267 seats in Chittoor district, 237 seats in Anantapur district, 234 seats in Kurnool and 209 seats in Nellore district.
Counselling was conducted for 1,122 seats in which 606 seats were under open category, for SC 168, ST 67, BC-A 79, BC-B 112, BC-C 11 and BC-D 79 seats. The counselling was conducted revenue division-wise. As the IIIT officials identified several rural areas in the district as urban areas, students who scored high marks in rural areas could not get seats. The problem has arisen as data was wrongly entered in the Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) application form.
The ICR application forms were received from students before Class X examinations and seats were allotted based on them. Teachers didn’t pay much attention to fill the ICR application forms as the education department only takes date of birth, name and moles from them and print the marks lists. Teachers failed to properly fill other columns in the ICR application forms and non-teaching staff and others also filled the form.
In some application forms, reservation quota was also wrongly marked. Villages were mentioned as towns. Students, who scored high marks in rural areas, failed to get seats. About 3,000 students of oriental secondary school don’t have social studies in their curriculum.
They have English, Hindi and Sanskrit. However, selections for IIIT were made subject-wise. Several oriental SSC students lamented that they were not considered for selection as social studies was not part of their curriculum. Representatives of Institute for Electrical Governance and the revenue divisional officers took part in the counselling. Students and parents expressed dissatisfaction over the selection.