Bengaluru: Class 12 students who wrote the Karnataka Common Entrance Test were flummoxed when they were unable to proceed with their application process on Wednesday. Ranks 1 to 2,000 were scheduled to upload their documents on Wednesday and Thursday. One of the most crucial stages in securing a seat in engineering colleges in the State is uploading of documents. Students and parents tried uploading the necessary documents till Wednesday evening, but to no avail. Some students even had to answer the JEE during the day.

After several attempts, students decided against filling the application on the first day, and wait till Thursday. “I tried logging in and failed. I headed to the cyber cafe, but the site showed it was ‘under maintenance’. I called others to check and they were facing the same issue,” one of the CET toppers told TNIE. No one knew what went wrong.

A Karnataka Examination Authority official told TNIE that an expert committee meeting was held on Wednesday, and it was decided that the final date for opening up the link will be decided later. “This is to avoid the inconvenience that students have to go through, such as submitting documents to the tahsildar and education officer, in the middle of their JEE,” said the official.

This delay in admissions affects more than 1.75 lakh students who wrote the KCET examination amid the Covid-19 scare, just to ensure that their first year of undergraduate course is not lost. Each bracket of ranks was allocated consecutive days up to the last rank, whose documentation process was to be completed on September 27. While there are CET aspirants writing the JEE, several students are scheduled to write the NEET that will follow. New dates for the link will be out on September 5, as per department sources.