BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha Joint Entrance Examinations (OJEE) 2020 is likely to commence from September 9.
OJEE chairman SK Chand said the dates are tentative and the committee will announce the dates for the examination and downloading of admit cards after reviewing the situation this month.
However, the Directorate of Technical Education and Training (DTET) Odisha, in a letter to the government polytechnic institutes and ITIs, has said that the examination is scheduled to be held between September 9 and 15. The government polytechnic institutes and ITIs have been chosen as OJEE examination centres.
The directorate has also asked these institutes at Balangir, Deogarh, Boudh, Gajapati, Jagatsinghpur, Jajpur, Kalahandi, Kandhamal, Kendrapara, Malkangiri, Mayurbhanj, Nabarangpur, Nayagarh, Puri, and Sonepur to cooperate with the OJEE committee for inspection of their facilities for the online test.
The Tata Consultancy Services Limited has been engaged in inspection of these centres.
The OJEE committee had recently announced to extend the number of centres to 15 against last year’s eight to allow students to choose the place of the test as per their convenience during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The 15 centres announced earlier are Bhubaneswar, Baripada, Berhampur, Balasore, Bhadrak, Bargarh, Cuttack, Jeypore, Rayagada, Dhenkanal, Angul, Keonjhar, Sambalpur, Jharsuguda, and Rourkela.
Sources said if the new Polytechnics and ITIs are found to have adequate facilities, the OJEE may extend the number of centres further to 30 to have at least one centre in each district for the online test.
The online applications for OJEE-2020 have already been submitted. Approximately 64,000 candidates have submitted their forms.
The OJEE Committee had announced to do away with the second or special OJEE this year considering the delay in conducting the OJEE-2020. However, a special entrance test along with OJEE-2020 will be conducted for admission into the vacant BTech seats in government and private engineering colleges and technical institutes.