CET document verification likely to go online

If all goes as per plan, professional seat aspirants who qualify for counselling after the Common Entrance Test may not have to travel far for document verification.

The Karnataka Examinations Authority, which only recently announced that the CET application process will go online, is now planning to make the document verification process online.

The present verification process is time-consuming. Until the last admission season, students were divided into groups based on ranking and categories. While students under the sports, NCC and physical disabilities categories were given two days, verification for the remaining students would take over 15 days. Students had to go to helpline centres and wait for their turn.

Benefits : Sources in the KEA said online document verification would benefit both the students and the KEA.

“There are three main aspects to document verification: caste/category; whether they qualify under the rural category; and whether they belong to Kannada medium. The rest are common. The KEA usually spends over Rs. 1 crore on the regular document verification process as officials have to be appointed, their stay and food expenses covered, and arrangements need to be made for systems for the process,” an official said.

Asked if the new system will be able to take the load of a large number of students, officials said of the roughly 1.5 lakh students who write the CET, only around 80,000 qualify. Of this, less than 40,000 have a genuine shot at getting the better seats.

The tricky aspect would be to ensure the authenticity of documents. Students will not be allowed to upload documents. We are seeing if college principals and deputy commissioners or tahsildars can upload them,” an official added.