NEW DELHI: The University Grants Commission has turned down Jamia Millia Islamia’s request to hold CUET only for eight undergraduate courses, saying that it should consider the new format of exams for
all courses. Among the Central Universities in Delhi, Jamia is the only one apart from Delhi University and JawaharLal Nehru University which has not yet declared its admission policy in terms of CUET for the academic session 2022-23.
Jamia officials, however, could not be contacted regarding the UGC’s directive. On March 29, the Jamia registrar had written to the UGC chairman informing the decision of holding CUET for eight courses — BA (Hons) courses in Sanskrit, Hindi, French & Francophone Studies, Spanish & Latin American Studies, Economics, and History. The two other courses were BSc Biotechnology and B. vocal (solar energy). Jami offers about 60 UG courses.
Sources in the university said that they made a decision to choose only eight subjects as they first wanted to know how the exams would be conducted and did not want to disturb the entire admission policy. “We decided on eight courses on a trial basis. Maybe next year, we will implement it for all the courses. We have got the approval from the UGC as well,” a source said.
The university had also requested the UGC to provide a merit list for the specific eight subjects and to remit the share of the income from the application fee in proportion to the students applying in Jamia.
The UGC notification, however, clarified that the CUET criteria may not apply to the activity-based courses including fine arts, performing arts, sports, physical education among others.
As the National Testing Agency (NTA) started with the CUET registration process on April 7, the UGC wrote to the vice-chancellors of all the 45 Central Universities across the country, clarifying that all universities should use only CUET scores for undergraduate admissions.