Thousands of candidates, who appeared for the University Grants Commission National Eligibility Test (UGC NET) Kannada paper on Sunday were in for a shock as a majority of the questions were in Hindi and only a few were in Kannada.
Following this, the National Testing Agency (NTA) said the examination will be rescheduled. The agency said that due to “technical difficulties in some centres”, the examination could not be conducted and they decided to reschedule the exam. The revised date will be uploaded on the website, the agency said.
The test is a gateway to obtain eligibility for Assistant Professorship, Junior Research Fellowship or both in Indian universities and colleges.
A candidate, who appeared for the UGC NET Kannada subject paper on Sunday in Bengaluru, said, “We write a common General Knowledge paper and were supposed to write our Kannada subject paper in the online test. Only 10 questions were in Kannada and the rest of the questions were in Hindi. Our centre heads tried to reupload the questions, but nothing helped. I could attempt only 10 questions and did not even understand the remaining 90 questions,” he said.
At many centres, the students staged a protest outside the examination centre. In many exam halls, there was chaos as the invigilators tried to reload and refresh the questions of the Kannada subject but were shocked to see only Hindi questions in the Kannada subject.
A public notice by NTA stated: “NTA has decided to reschedule the examination of impacted candidates. The revised date for the rescheduled examination will be uploaded shortly along with the revised admit card for these candidates. Candidates are advised to regularly visit NTA website(s) www.nta.ac.in, https://ugcnet.nta.nic.in for the latest updates regarding the examination.”
But a student said, “We want the Kannada test to be rescheduled for all candidates and not just for those students who had trouble logging in.”
