Mou Chakraborty
Kolkata, June 14, 2007
THE WEST Bengal Joint Entrance Examination (WBJEE) Board has rubbed the Jadavpur University the wrong way.
The Jadavpur University has on Thursday shot off a letter to the higher education minister Sudarsan Roychoudhuri requesting him to find out how marks of this year’s WBJEE was calculated.
The students taking WBJEE this year took a 100 marks exam in maths while there were 50 marks each for physics and chemistry. The WBJEE board had decided to convert the scores of math into 200 to prepare the merit list. This left the JU fuming.
“We do not accept this method. We want to know whether such method has really been followed,” said JU vice-chancellor S.K. Sanyal.
In their letter to the minister, the JU authorities have also questioned the functioning of the WBJEE Board. They have told the minister that if the Board failed to be transparent and democratic then a separate autonomous body should be formed to conduct the exam.
“An autonomous body like the Public Service Commission (PSC) and the College Service Commission (CSC) with representation from all stakeholders could be the model,” said JU executive council member Partha Pratim Biswas. But he added, “If the WBJEE Board lives up to its autonomy model and functions democratically, we will accept it”.
He said, “The decision on how the ranking methodology to be adopted was not taken democratically. There was no mention of it during the Board meeting. It was the chairman who took the decision. This is the most unscientific way of preparing a merit list and we do not agree with the pattern,” said Biswas.
Disputing his claim, member secretary of the Board Ashim Bose said, “The decision was taken at a confidential committee meeting and later approved by the Board”.
The Board still holds that the decision to give more weightage to maths has its merits. “The primary requirement for engineering students is to be good in maths. I do not think that the decision is entirely wrong. However, we are no one to comment on the method since whatever the WBJEE Board decided we implemented that,” Bose added.
JU admits top rankers of WBJEE for its engineering faculty and hence the merit list prepared by the Board affects their quality of students intake.
A section of JU’s engineering faculty is also demanding a full-time chairman like those in the PSC and CSC. At present, as per government order vice-chancellor of the Bengal Engineering and Science University (BESU), Shibpur, N.R. Banerjea is the chairman of the WBJEE Board.
The JU teachers also want the Board office to be moved out of the BESU campus and housed in a separate building. A member of the JU engineering faculty said, “We need this problem to be rectified. If possible a fresh list should come out this year. In any case there should be more transparency from next year”.
The West Bengal University of Technology (WBUT) however does not have any problem with the method adopted to prepare the merit list. “The joint entrance board is an autonomous body. We do not have any problem with the methodology. It’s their prerogative,” said WBUT registrar S.R. Islam.
mou.hindustantimes@yahoo.com
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