Cuttack, July 9: The state government's bid to change the admission system for engineering diploma holders in BTech through lateral entry this year received a setback today.

Orissa High Court has directed the state government to restore the procedure that was prevalent till last year.

The diploma holder students take admission in BTech second year through lateral entry on the basis of their Odisha Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE) rank.

While 20 per cent of the intake in technical institutions was reserved for lateral entry, all vacant seats of first year in BTech courses were carried forward to second year. These vacancies were filled up by admitting diploma holders.

However, the government imposed restrictions on the carry forward practice and capped the maximum number of students any college can admit through lateral entry to 20 per cent of sanctioned strength in any stream from the current academic year.

Private engineering colleges of the state had opposed the government's move. One of the institutes even filed a petition seeking the court's intervention against it.

"Acting on it, the division bench of Justice Indrajit Mahanty and Justice D.P. Choudhury directed the state government and OJEE to include the vacant seats in the first year and compute the seat matrix afresh for counselling," petitioner counsel Bhagaban Mohanty told The Telegraph.

A total of 16,198 students had qualified for admission into BTech second year through lateral entry this year. All lateral entry counselling for BTech courses had started on July 4 and ended today.

"The high court further directed the OJEE authorities to extend the dates for counselling for lateral entry and allow the candidates who had already locked their choices to lock-in choices afresh," Mohanty said.

Odisha Private Engineering College Association (OPECA) secretary Binod Dash said: "The high court order has vindicated our stand that the government should not have problems in allowing the carry forward of vacant seats from the first year to second year for lateral entry admissions as seats are vacant and students are available."

Earlier on June 5, OPECA, in a memorandum to technical education minister Sanjay Dasburma sought allowing the procedure of carry forward of all vacant seats of first year to second year for lateral entry admission to continue.

Faulty question case

Dispute over the legality of awarding full marks for incorrect questions in the Odisha Civil Services (OCS) preliminary examination is back in Orissa High Court.

Priyambada Das, 34, a resident of Rourkela, has challenged the order of the State Administrative Tribunal that had on June 18 invalidated the OCS (Preliminary) Examination - 2011 results for the second time in 10 months. She filed a petition yesterday seeking direction for a fresh preliminary examination.

The tribunal had directed Odisha Public Service Commission (OPSC) to re-evaluate the answer sheets of 18 subjects in which full marks had been given for faulty questions and award full marks only to those candidates who had attempted them.

In her petition, Priyambada, who had failed to make it to the OCS - 2011, has alleged that the direction to award marks only to those candidates who have attempted the incorrect question (while having negative marking system for wrong answer) is "self-contradictory" and "illegal."

"In negative marking for wrong answers, a candidate has the only option of leaving aside the question which is wrong, the petition contends.

ambiguous or has no option. At this juncture, the order passed by the tribunal to award full marks to those who have attempted the faulty questions is inoperative," the petition contends.

"It is not sustainable in the eye of law as it changes the rule of examination after examination is over," the petition contends.

OPSC held the OCS (Preliminary) Exam - 2011 on January 19, 2014. Nearly 35,200 candidates took the test. Only 5,823 of them were declared qualified on May 2, 2014 to take the main examination.

Priyambada had challenged the results in the tribunal. On August 26, the tribunal quashed the results on the ground that grace marks were given in 18 of the 26 optional subjects for faulty questions and directed the OPSC calculate marks of candidates by eliminating the faulty questions and negative marking and come up with results afresh.

Initially, when the tribunal order was challenged, the high court, on September 3, 2014, issued a stay order on it and allowed OPSC to go ahead with the OCS (main) examination, but directed it not to go ahead with the evaluation process. The main examination was held September 6 to 30 and 5,320 candidates took the test.

Later on January 16, 2015, the high court remitted the matter back to the tribunal for fresh adjudication by a division bench.

While invalidating the preliminary examination results again on June 18, the tribunal directed the OPSC to prepare a fresh merit list by awarding full marks only to the candidates who had attempted the faulty questions in the 18 optional subjects.

"In the fresh merit list, there is possibility that the names of some candidates, who have already appeared in the main examination, are not there. Such candidates are to be treated as disqualified from the preliminary examination as well as treated to have been eliminated from the main examination," the tribunal had ruled in its June 18 order.