When the Union government proposed to hold a single entrance test for all engineering colleges five years ago, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) came out together against the move even as it was intended to provide relief to thousands of students from the burden of taking multiple-entrance tests across the country.
Raising the banner of revolt, the premier institutes accused the government of interfering with their autonomy and refused to give up their dominion over holding of the exclusive test for admissions to the IITs at any cost.
As a consequence, the idea of “one nation, one test,” put forth by the then Human Resource Development (HRD) minister Kapil Sibal was killed at the very stage of its conception, notwithstanding the fact that the proposal was widely hailed and well appreciated by students and parents across the country.
The government wanted to introduce a common test for entrance to all engineering colleges operating in India so that students’ time and money are both saved and they also do not have to undergo the stress of multiple entrance examinations.
To that end, the HRD ministry had proposed to replace the All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE), along with the Joint Entrance Examination of the IITs and the IISc, Bengaluru, with a single entrance test in 2012.
However, the ministry had to bow down to the pressure from the IITs and it decided to hold the entrance test in two parts. The ministry also readily acceded to the IITs’ demand to retain the title of the test as the JEE.
After arriving at a consensus with the premier technical institutes, the HRD ministry notified the holding of the JEE Main for admissions to all centrally-funded technical institutes, followed by the JEE Advanced for admissions to the IITs. The first test under the new scheme was held in 2013.
Although the two-part entrance test was touted as a new format for engineering entrance tests, it was basically a move back to square one.
Before the introduction of the JEE Main and JEE Advanced, the CBSE held the AIEEE for admissions to engineering and architecture courses offered by various institutes, including the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIITs) while the IITs conducted IIT-JEE for filling up their seats.
The IITs may have sabotaged the well-intentioned move of holding a common entrance test in the name of maintaining their standards and reputation five years ago, but the mess that they have been creating every year with erroneous questions in the JEE Advanced papers is increasingly making it clear that organising such a large-scale entrance test is not a core competence of the IIT system.
The worst of the JEE Advanced mess came this year when IIT-Madras, the organising institute for the examination, awarded 18 bonus marks unilaterally to all of the candidates, declaring some of the test questions incorrect although many of the reputed coaching institutes and some candidates who took the test claimed that it were the answer keys published by IIT-Madras that was wrong and that several answers could have been attributed to the questions that were declared as incorrect by the institute.
But, IIT-Madras did not pay heed to any of them and decided to go ahead with its decision to award 18 bonus marks, highest so far, to all candidates for the questions it declared as incorrect.
The issue came to limelight after one of the women candidates from Uttar Pradesh filed a petition in the Supreme Court against the IIT’s decision to award 18 bonus marks.
The institute awarded 11 marks for flawed questions in Paper-II and seven marks for the erroneous questions in Paper-I, irrespective of whether or not all the candidates even attempted to answer these questions.
The petitioner described the institute’s decision as “arbitrary and violative of the rights of the candidates,” who succeeded in solving these questions, pleading the court to order IIT-Madras to award the marks for the erroneous questions only to candidates who had attempted them and arrived at one of several possible correct answers to those questions, and asked that the all-India merit ranking list be revised accordingly.
“Due to the bonus marks, nearly 20,000 students who were non-deserving qualified and some deserving students lagged behind because of the huge difference created in ranks…,” the petitioner claimed.
Rather than awarding bonus marks to all candidates, several other ways of reconciling the interest of the meritorious candidates were available with IIT-Madras. “It was the responsibility of the institute, being the organiser of the test for this year, to cure the defects in the question paper,” the petitioner added.
Out of 1,59,540 candidates who appeared for JEE Advanced this year, 50,455 were declared as qualified for admission to the IITs while the number of seats available for undergraduate courses at the premier technical institutes this year were only about 11,000 altogether. In 2016, 36,566 candidates had qualified.
“As per the answer keys published by various coaching institutions, it is clear that several answers could have been attributed to the questions given in the question paper and therefore the awarding of bonus marks does not even arise. IIT-Madras could have simply given full marks to all those who attempted and got any one of the several correct answers,” the petitioner claimed.
The apex court, however, turned down the pleas of the petitioner and allowed IIT-Madras to fill the seats, observing that a total of 33,307 students had already taken admission during the joint counselling by the IITs and the NITs.
The apex court, however, expressed concern over the framing of wrong and vague questions in JEE Advanced, directing the Centre and the IITs to file an affidavit assuring that such mistakes would not be repeated in future.
Several IIT faculty and examination experts, however, felt that implementation of the Court’s directive would remain “a big challenge” for the IITs.