As many as 1,07,643 of the available 1,26,744 seats for various professional courses, mainly engineering, have been taken up in the first round of counselling for students who had appeared in the Karnataka Common Entrance Test( K-CET), which began on Friday.

The Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) said that the remaining 19,000 seats would be available in the second                             round of counselling.

A KEA official said that the students who had secured both Engineering and Medical seats were bound to forsake one of them. Consequently, the number of engineering seats available in the second round of counselling may change. This year, 2.74 lakh students are eligible to seek admission to Engineering courses in Karnataka. On the other hand, of the 8,932 seats that were up for grabs in the medical category, 8,148 were allotted.

In a first, the KEA has offered candidates the option to complete payment of fees through a number of options, including internet banking, debit/credit cards.