AICTE lowers eligibility marks for BE entry

COIMBATORE: Bowing to pressure from various State Governments, including Tamil Nadu, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has lowered the minimum qualification marks for entry into BE/BTech and BArch degree programmes from the next academic year. According to the AICTE’s recently released approval process handbook, from 2012-13 a student who has secured an aggregate score of 45 per cent in core subjects in Plus Two board examinations will be eligible for admission into technical degree programmes. For reserved category students the eligibility is 40 per cent marks. This is five per cent lesser than the eligibility marks fixed for the current academic year. However, in Tamil Nadu as per a prevailing policy, the minimum eligibility marks for Most Backward Community candidates will be even lower at a mere pass (i.e., 40 per cent for State Board and 35 per cent for CBSE). For Backward Class (BC) candidates the requirement is 45 per cent and for Open Competition (OC) category students it is 50 per cent. It remains to be seen if the State Government would extend the benefit of the AICTE’s lower eligibility mark to the OC candidates next year. “A separate committee decides on the eligibility marks for admissions into technical programmes. The committee had reduced the minimum qualification marks for 2012-13 for the entire country on the basis of requests from various States. But this need not be final as depending upon further requests from State Governments the committee can revise (lower) it,” AICTE Southern Region Chairman R Rudramoorthy told Express on Thursday. In fact, this year, the Tamil Nadu Government had written to the All India Council for Technical Education seeking permission to allow admissions to be conducted on the basis of the State policy of reduced eligibility norms so as to benefit rural students. Interestingly, a few years ago, while Tamil Nadu had a higher minimum qualification norm, the All India Council for Technical Education  had fixed a mere pass in Plus Two as the eligibility for admissions.