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IIT-JEE reform panel moots single entrance test, to seek public opinion

Akshaya Mukul, TNN Apr 22, 2011, 04.02am IST

NEW DELHI: T Ramasami Committee on reforms in IIT Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) has decided to have a single entrance examination for admission to engineering course, but is yet to firm up how specifically it would be done.

The panel has decided to seek public opinion before finalizing its recommendation. In the next few days, a dedicated website would be created to draw public opinion. It remains to be seen if IIT Council agrees to be a part of engineering entrance examination that would also be for admission to non-IIT engineering colleges. Even state governments would have to come on board.

Sources said, to begin with even if an all-India single entrance examination is not introduced; JEE would definitely be reformed. Reform in JEE is one of the pleas sought by Rajiv Kumar, professor of IIT-Kharagpur, in his petition in the Supreme Court.

On Thursday, Ramasami gave a short presentation of three ways in which single entrance examination can be conducted. HRD minister Kapil Sibal, directors of IIT-Kanpur, Delhi and Roorkee were present. Few IIT directors have raised queries about the methods suggested by Ramasami.

Since 2008, Ramasami Committee is the fourth attempt to reform JEE. The first was an internal committee under V G Idichandy of IIT-Madras. He suggested scrapping of JEE, and considering Standard XII marks for IIT admission. Recommendations were neither made public nor discussed.

In October 2009, IIT Council suggested increasing eligibility cutoff from the existing 60% to 80% in Standard XII. Then, a committee of secretaries of department of science & technology, department of bio-technology and department of science and industrial research was set up to suggest IIT-JEE reforms. No proposal came from them.

This was followed by the Acharya Committee of four IIT directors to suggest JEE reforms. It submitted an interim report for admission, based on weighted sum of normalized Standard XII marks along with proposed SAT-like examination. It was rejected by most stakeholders like IIT faculty, state board chiefs etc.