Question : COMMON ENTRANCE TEST

(a) whether the Government proposes to hold a single reformatted common entrance test for admission in the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and other central institutes from the academic year 2013;

(b) if so, the details thereof including the modalities worked out in this regard;

(c) whether the Government has taken note of opposition to the proposed move;

(d) if so, the details thereof; and

(e) the steps taken by the Government to protect the interests of the students especially from the rural/non-metro areas?

MINISTER OF HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT ( SHRI KAPIL SIBAL )

(a) to (e): A statement is laid on the Table of the House.

STATEMENT REFERRED TO IN REPLY TO PARTS (a) TO (e) OF THE LOK SABHA STARRED QUESTION NO. 8 FOR 08.08.2012, ASKED BY SHRI SANJAY BHOI AND SHRI CHARLES DIAS REGARDING “COMMON ENTRANCE TEST”.

(a) & (b) : It has been decided to have a Joint Entrance Examination for Admission to undergraduate engineering programmes in IITs, NITs and other Centrally Funded Technical Institutions (CFTIs) as detailed under :

(i) A Joint Entrance Examination for admission to the undergraduate programmes in engineering would be conducted in two parts, JEE-MAIN and JEE-ADVANCED.

(ii) JEE ADVANCED examination will be held after JEE MAIN with a suitable time gap. Only the top 150,000 candidates (including all categories) in JEE MAIN will be qualified to appear in the JEE Advanced examination.

(iii) Admissions to IITs will be based only on category wise All India Rank (AIR) in JEE ADVANCED subject to condition that such candidates are in the top 20 percentile of successful candidates of their Boards in applicable categories.

(iv) Admission to NITs will be based on 40% weightage for performance in class XII Board marks normalized on percentile basis and the remainder 60% weightage would be given for performance in JEE Main and a combined merit list would be decided accordingly. This policy could also be adopted by other CFTIs.

(v) JEE-MAIN tests shall be multiple choice objective type paper whereas the nature and modalities of the JEE-ADVANCED shall be determined by the Joint Admission Board of IITs.

(vi) The proposed changes will be effective from the year 2013 and both Centrally Funded Technical Institutions (CFTIs) and CBSE would work jointly to facilitate implementation.

(c) & (d) : The consensus has emerged after having detailed deliberations amongst the various stakeholders, viz., IIT Faculty Federation, Senates of IITs, Joint Admission Board of IITs, as also in the several meetings of the Council of IITs as well as that of Council of NITs, etc.

(e) : The decision to give due weightage to performance in class XII Board Examination, and consequently to the schooling system, is likely to help students from smaller towns, rural areas and girls more, who otherwise are generally unable to afford costly coaching institutions.