KARACHI, Sept 19: Students have claimed that discrepancies exist in the merit or placement lists for colleges issued by the Centralized Admission Committee.

Students informed that despite the fact that they had secured higher marks in the SSC examinations than what was the cut off for admission to Rana Liaquat Ali Khan College of Home Economics, they had not been included on the list. The students also showed their admission forms and mark sheets, and mentioned that it was all because of the malfunctioning of computers that they had been excluded.

Claims forms from students are pouring in at the centres set up for the purpose, and it was surprising that during the first three days, about 1,000 claim forms had been received in different faculties, stating that either they had not been placed at their colleges of choice, or had been thrown far away from their residential areas, an insider said.

One female student residing in Gulistan-i-Jauher has been sent to a Malir institution for admission. Similarly, a student from Malir has been sent to Gulzar-i-Hijri for college admission.

Another student said that she had mentioned Riaz Govt College as her second choice where admission had been closed at 411 marks, but was surprised to learn that the CAP had sent her to a college in Gizri for which she had never applied, despite the fact that she had secured 473 marks. Interestingly the young woman, residing in the New Town area, had marks entitling her to gain admission to Riaz College or APWA Girls HSS on merit.

When the chairman of the admission committee, Dr Mujeeb Feroze was contacted, he said that about 500 to 600 claim forms had been received during the first three days for changes in the case of Home Economics, General Science (male and female) and pre-engineering (female) groups. He said that 80 per cent of the claims could be attributed to students who either filled in two forms or mentioned an incorrect postal code, which created problems.

However, he said that the number of genuine claims was not more than 10-15 per cent, which was manageable.