Overhaul of WBJEE in offing

Mou Chakraborty
Kolkata, July 30
The unearthing of the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination racket has forced a rethink on the examination system. The state higher education minister Sudarsan Roychaudhuri has decided to re-haul the JEE and has asked the board to submit a report in this regard at the earliest. The final decision however will not be taken before September.
Answering a question by SUCI MLA Deba Prasad Sarkar, the minister told the state Assembly today: “The state government is looking into the entire matter with importance. We have asked the joint entrance board to call an emergency meeting in this regard and give us a report on how the system can be further sanitised and made more effective.” He added that he had asked the board to inquire into the loopholes in the exam system.
The higher education minister however has no plans to scrap the system. “It would have been great if we could have admitted students on the basis of marks awarded in Class XII board examination. But a Supreme Court directive says that all professional courses should admit students through a common entrance test, hence we cannot do away with it,” said Roychaudhuri.
However, the government is busy searching for alternatives. “We are inviting everyone to give their suggestions in this regard and we would give due consideration to every suggestion offered,” he said. The suggestions can include how the loopholes of the present system of WBJEE can be mended and the exam be made more secure; suggestions on starting a different common entrance test altogether will also be entertained.
Every year the WBJEE board meets in September to discuss the exam already held that year and address its problems and moot proposals for a further upgrade during the next exam. “This year we would hold the meeting in early September, so that we look through all the suggestions and decide what can be done,” said Roychaudhuri.
The higher education department is not pointing fingers at WBJEE officials yet before the board submits its report. The ministry however feels that the invigilators at various exam centres were largely responsible for this goof up. The government is also seriously considering doing away with all outstation centres for conducting WBJEE and would instead ask all interested candidates from all over the country to take the exam by coming to Bengal or Agartala.
Among various other options that the state would consider includes, taking fingerprints of students appearing for the exam, as done in IITJEE. The exam model of IITJEE and other entrance exams will be considered. The government would also consider using the same photograph of the student in the admit card, attendance sheet, rank card. It would ask the college to use the same picture in the college identity card so that the candidate who is taking the exam is the person who gets admitted in the college. This would prevent dummy candidates from taking the exam on behalf of others.
A proposal on having a separate medical entrance exam board, instead of WBJEE conducting both the engineering and medical entrance exam, has also been mooted by the health department.
mou.hindustanimes@yahoo.com