In the wake of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET-2026) paper leak fiasco, the State government has decided to conduct the Common Entrance Test (CET) counselling first for engineering and others related courses this year, except for the courses that are conducting counselling based on NEET ranking.

Accordingly, counselling will be held first for eight courses, including engineering, based on the CET rank, and counselling for medical, dental and AYUSH courses will be held later based on the NEET rank.

In addition, it was also decided to allow candidates of all courses, including medical and engineering, to upgrade up to the third round of CET counselling, in the meeting held with the private professional college managements, and officials of the Higher Education and Medical Education Departments, headed by Higher Education Minister M.C. Sudhakar on Thursday.

Dr. Sudhakar told The Hindu, “In the previous years, counselling was not conducted in May or June and would start in July. However, private colleges were alleging that counselling was being delayed. This time, the NEET will be held on June 21 and the results are likely to be declared by the end of July. Then, the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) will announce the NEET counselling schedule. It will not be possible to conduct NEET and CET counselling simultaneously. In addition, thousands of students from other States will participate in the COMED-K counselling.”

It has already been decided to conduct counselling earlier for engineering and other professional courses in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, he added.

“Earlier, even when CET and NEET counselling were conducted simultaneously, students were allowed to upgrade their courses till the second round. However, it takes at least 30 to 40 days to complete one round of counselling. Therefore, we have decided to allow upgradation till the third round for candidates of all courses, including medical, dental, AYUSH and engineering. For example, if a candidate who wanted a medical seat gets admitted to engineering in a good college in CET counselling and then gets a medical seat in NEET counselling, then this candidate and the engineering candidates for this seat that remains vacant will also be allowed to upgrade,” he added.

Fee reimbursement

Further, the Minister stated that during upgradation, the entire fee will be reimbursed to the students who give up the engineering seat and enroll in medical courses. “In addition, the colleges have also agreed to reimburse the fee of the students who get upgraded to the engineering seats that remain vacant from the students who joined medical courses,” he explained.

“Due to the delay in NEET, 10% of the students will have their engineering and medical seats interchanged. It was suggested that they should allow free exit to those students. All the professional college associations have unanimously agreed to this,” Dr. Sudhakar said.

Prasanna. H., Executive Director of Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA), requested that the seat matrix of courses based on CET rank, including engineering, be provided soon. Medical Education Minister Sharan Prakash Patil and others participated in the meeting.