The Centre’s move to introduce a two-tier system for selection and admission to the centrally funded engineering institutes, including the National Institute of Technology (NIT) and the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), as against a different methodology for the IITs has met with stiff opposition from the states.
The states’ strong reservation on the issue came to the fore during the education ministers’ meeting convened by Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal in the capital. In fact, the HRD Ministry has been trying to drum up support for its proposal to allow greater flexibility to the IITs regarding the admission procedure. Even though the states’ opposition to the proposal was recorded in the minutes of the meeting, the HRD Minister remained non-committal on the issue. Interestingly, Sibal claimed that there was overwhelming support for the common entrance test.
According to him, the states would have the freedom to join in the common examination system and have the autonomy to determine their own relative weightages to normalised Class 12 Board marks, performance in JEE-main and Jee-advanced. Sibal said that the academic body to be constituted for the JEE-MAIN test would have the necessary representation from the states. “The states were requested to convey their decision on the year of joining the common admission process and the relative weightages to class XII Board marks, performance in JEE-MAIN and JEE- ADVANCED by June 30 to enable preparations to be made accordingly,” he said.