NEW DELHI: The first day of the phase two CUET-UG exam was a total washout, with thousands of anxious students sent back home without taking the crucial exam due to technical glitches at most of the examination centres across India.
The National Testing Agency (NTA) later declared that the examination in both the first slot (in the morning) and the second slot (in the afternoon) were cancelled and announced new dates for the Central University Entrance Test undergraduate (CUET-UG) exams, a gateway to undergraduate courses in 90 universities.
The technical glitches were, however, reported from all 489 examination centres in the afternoon shift, forcing NTA to cancel the exam across India. The reason was that the general test paper was uploaded late. Instead of 3 pm, the exam paper was uploaded after 5 pm. The exam gets over at 6 pm.
While the postponed exam of the first shift will be conducted on August 12, that of the second shift has now been slotted from August 12-14.
The news of the cancellation began early in the morning when the testing agency announced that exams in Kerala have been cancelled due to rains. The exam scheduled for August 4,5 and 6 has been postponed and fresh dates will be announced later on NTA website.
Soon after, several centres in the morning announced that the exam had been cancelled due to server issues. Students flooded social media complaining that they couldn’t complete their exams due to technical glitches and would have to take the exam again.
Many students also shared that they were not informed beforehand and only got to know when they reached the examination centres in the morning that their exam had been postponed.
As more and more centres in the day reported technical glitches, NTA in the evening announced cancellation of the exam.
In a public notice, the testing agency said, “Due to various administrative and technical reasons, the CUET (UG) – 2022 examination scheduled for August 4 August 2022 (first shift) has been postponed to 12 August 2022 for a few examination centres.”
The exam was cancelled in 29 examination centres in 17 states and union territory.
In Tamil Nadu the exam was cancelled in five centres - Coimbatore, Dindigul, Tiruvarur, Viluppuram, Virudhunagar – while in Jharkhand and Maharashtra, exams in four cities each were called off. Exams were also postponed in two cities each in Arunachal Pradesh (Namsari and Pasighat) and Uttar Pradesh (Noida and Varanasi). It was cancelled in Delhi too.
The NTA added that further, because of technical reasons, the question paper for the second shift of the examination could only be uploaded at 5 pm and the download at 489 centres could start at 5:25 pm, while the exam was scheduled to begin from 3 pm.
“Reports were asked from the observers /city coordinators on ground. Based on their recommendations, the second shift scheduled for 04 August 2022 (shift 2) (from 3pm to 6 pm) is cancelled and the same will now be conducted between 12 to 14 August 2022,” the NTA announced.
It added that the same admit card will be valid for the concerned candidates whose examinations have been postponed.
It also said that in case the August 12-14 dates are not suitable, the candidates can send an e-mail to datechange@nta.ac.in mentioning their desired date and roll number.
Meanwhile, the candidates are also advised to be in touch with the NTA website(s) www.nta.ac.in and https://cuet.samarth.ac.in/ for the latest updates regarding the examination.
NTA is conducting the debut CUET UG - 2022 exams from July 15 2022 to August 20 at 489 examination centres located in approximately 259 cities across India and nine cities outside India. Around 6,80,000 candidates are appearing in the second phase.