Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has approached the National Testing Agency (NTA) for conducting its entrance examination but the teachers there are against such a proposal. Owing to this, the HRD Ministry is yet to take a decision on whether to allow NTA to go ahead with the conduct of JNU entrance examinations.
NTA came into being in May this year and is in the process of conducting its first full-fledged UGC-NET examination. All the exams except National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test for admissions to medical colleges will be computer-based.
JNU teachers and students are opposing the entrance exams that have been announced by the university as there were no consultations on the issue. It seems the HRD Ministry has also buckled under their pressure. This has put a question mark on how the exams will be conducted.
A notice regarding the conduct of entrance examinations for all courses in the 2019-20 was put up on the university’s website last week. It says that NTA will conduct the entrance exams in the format of multiple choice questions in May next year.
JNU teachers association has opposed the unilateral decision taken by the university as this will be in violation of the subjective standards of the exam.
The secretary general of JNUTA, Professor Avinash Kumar, said the objective entrance test has been imposed without any consultation with the Academic Council. Kumar said that the objective test also violates some of the ordinances of the university.
Among the central universities, only JNU has approached NTA for the conduct of online exams. The HRD Minister also made it clear that no exams for admissions will be conducted in Delhi University.
It is believed that ABVP, the students’ wing of RSS, is opposed to an entrance exam. As 2019 is an election year, the ministry has decided to shelve the proposal of having exams for DU admissions.
HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said the setting of question papers by NTA is done in a scientific manner.
Psychometric analysis has been done to improve the question papers and 1200 question paper setters for various exams have been allotted the task of setting the papers.
“Question paper setting is the key in all examinations. We are now in the elite group of countries which have national testing agencies. They will conduct flawless and transparent examinations,” said Javadekar.
There is little scope of any cheating or even any leak of the question papers. Altogether 40,000 jammers that have been deployed for the UGC-NET exams that will block telecommunication and broadband services. And 25,000 invigilators have been trained by the government. CCTV surveillance will also be there at all the examination centres.
The HRD minister said 4000 practice centres have been set up for students to get exposure to the computer-based test. NTA has also launched a mobile application for getting familiar with the computer-based test. Several lakh students have practised in these centres.
UGC-NET examination is the first examination that has been conducted by the NTA. The Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) for engineering will be the next examination to be conducted by the NTA.
NEET, Common Management Admission Test and Graduate Pharmacy Aptitude Test will also be conducted next year by NTA. NEET exam, however, will be conducted in the pen-and-paper mode. Around 9.5 lakh students will take the UGC-NET examination and JEE.