Thursday, May 19 2005 16:28 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Bangalore: Karnataka Government was toying with an idea to approach the Supreme Court to seek opinion on whether its recent order directing to maintain previous year's seat sharing quota and fee structure for engineering course seats could be applied to seats in medical and dental courses for the 2005-06 academic year.

The Cabinet Sub-Committee set up to guide the Government on admission of students to professional courses in private colleges would meet on May 21 to deliberate on these issues, Minister for Law and Parliamentary Affairs H K Patil told reporters in Bangalore.

The Supreme Court while disposing of a petition filed by M S Ramaiah Institute of Technology directed that seat sharing quota arrived between the managements of engineering colleges and the fee structure that prevailed during last year, shall be maintained for the coming year also.

During 2004-05, the Government and private engineering colleges had agreed on 75:25 seat sharing quota (Government having control over admission to 75 per cent of seats and the management to 25 per cent seats).

Karnataka Chief Minister N Dharam Singh had already held two rounds of negotiations with private college managements to evolve an amicably accepted formula on seat sharing and fee structure.

But no decision could emerge from these parleys as the managements chose to await the apex court ruling.