NEW DELHI: All prepared to give the Common University Entrance Test (CUET), 18-year-old Ritika (who goes by single name) reached the examination centre at southwest Delhi’s Dwarka on Friday morning, only to be told that she had shown up at the wrong venue. Rushing to reach the right venue Delhi University Sports Complex in north Delhi took her close to two hours to reach, when more than half of the exam duration was already over and she had to return home without being able to write the exam.
“On Thursday, I printed the admit card which mentioned my examination centre was ‘Dwarka Sector 3, Netaji Subhash Chandra University of Technology’. However, when we reached the spot we were informed that we were at the wrong location. After that, we re-entered the details on the UGC website and got to know that my examination centre changed to DU Sports Complex,” said a perplexed Ritika, who is a resident of west Delhi’s Moti Nagar.
Most of the candidates on day one of the CUET held on Friday to seek admission to UG courses in DU and other central universities, said that they reached the wrong centre, and they did not receive any alert related to changes in the allotted centres.
An official deputed at the exam centre, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the NTA diverted candidates from two centres to the DU Sports Complex centre, which created all the chaos. “At midnight, we received the information that NTA has diverted students from two other centres including Dwarka and Janakpuri to our centre. After this, we had to call two more teams for managing the exams. Besides, we had to arrange for more computer systems to conduct the exam swiftly. We even had to give out our staff’s laptops to candidates to manage the increased number,” the official said.
From last minute changes in exam centres making students run from one venue to another to those who had not received their admit cards to parents rushing to cyber cafes to check if the entry cards can be procured somehow, chaos and confusion marked the first day of the common exam. Blaming the National Testing Agency (NTA – tasked with conducting the CUET – for “mismanagement”, scores of parents at the DU Sports Complex said that their childrens’ future has been put at stake, as the authorities made changes to exam centre allotment late night ahead of the exam without leaving any scope for candidates to find out about it.
Rakesh Kumar, a parent, said, “This is very much like the demonetisation period. It’s total chaos and mismanagement; they don’t know how to conduct exams.” Much like Ritika, Lalita (goes by single name) and Anjali (goes by single name) too missed out on appearing in the exam for which they have been preparing for months. “What type of arrangement was done by the agency? They should have called us to inform us about this last-minute change. How can they just play with the students’ futures like this?” questioned Anjali, student of a Delhi government school in Kalkaji.
Khushi Choudhary, another candidate, said that she received the information regarding the examination centre post midnight because of which she had to print her admit card just before the exam at nearby cyber cafes. At least 15 candidates in the morning slot on Friday who missed the exam because of a last-minute change wrote a combined application to the office of the DU vice-chan-cellor requesting them to be allowed to appear in the exam in a different slot.