Even as the shrill gets louder over the demand for cancellation of entrance exams altogether in Telangana, the Central government’s decision to just postpone and not cancel JEE and NEET indicate that Common Entrance Tests (CETs) are here to stay and will be held later, if not sooner. Even before the Telangana government submitted to the High Court over its decision to postpone the State entrance exams due to rising COVID cases, there has been a demand from certain sections to cancel them and admit students in professional courses based on the qualifying examination marks.
“The Central government has clearly indicated by postponing the JEE and NEET that entry into professional courses will be based on entrance test only, even if they are delayed,” a senior official in the education department argued. “The Supreme Court’s judgment on these admissions is very clear and to change that status, all State governments need to unitedly argue in favour of cancellation at least for this year due to the unprecedented crisis,” he said. The intense competition for seats in good colleges will continue and cancelling entrance exams will stir a hornet’s nest. Controversies are bound to rise in medical related courses where seats are few and aspirants huge, and where even half a mark mars the chances of many.
“If the demand for admissions based on qualifying examination is accepted, there are bound to be legal issues. The biggest hurdle is the huge variation in exam methods of different boards and the disparity in competition levels. How will they be plugged?” a senior teacher asks. The valuation and assessment methods of annual examination papers of all streams have always been a bone of contention due to the huge human intervention in awarding the marks.
Statistics of Intermediate and EAMCET reveal that students who score more than 90% in Intermediate also end up in the 50,000 ranks band, given the intense competition. In fact, thousands of students score same marks in Intermediate and separating them with different ranks will always raise questions. “There would be too many claims for good seats and allotment process would leave a big headache for us”, officials say. CETs are the safe and effective way of handling this crisis as the legal issues can be avoided easily, an official said.
