Nearly 89 percent candidates from the western districts of the State who registered for the University Grants Commission’s (UGC) National Eligibility Test (NET) turned up for the examination that was conducted across the country on Sunday. The test consists of three optional papers with the first two papers conducted in the morning session and third paper in the evening session.
The UGC had permitted 77 universities to conduct the NET. In Coimbatore, the examination was conducted by the Bharathiar Univeristy at nine centres. As many as, 8,974 candidates had registered at the Bharathiar University for 78 subjects to qualify for lectureship and Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) .
Among them, 7,966 candidates (88.77 percent) appeared for the test, including 55 visually challenged and 78 differently-abled candidates.
“Candidates from nine districts including Palakkad in Kerala appeard for NET in the nine centres in Coimbatore,” said G James Pitchai, Vice Chancellor of Bharathiar University. Along with Registrar P KManoharan and UGC-NET Coordinator A Sethurama Subbiah, Pitchai inspected the examination centres and ensured that the test was conducted as per the UGC guidelines.
As per the new criteria, the minimum pass marks for general category candidates in Paper I and II is 40 and for OBC, SC, ST candidates, it is 35. For Paper III, the pass mark is 75 for general category students and 60 for SC/ST students.
A merit list will be prepared subject-wise and category-wise, using the aggregate marks of all the three papers secured by the candidates. Only the top 15 percent candidates (for each subject and category) from the merit list will be declared as qualified for lectureship.
A separate merit list for the award of JRF will be prepared from among the NET-qualified candidates.