– Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) Postponed twice for fear of spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, the IIT-JEE (Joint Entrance Examination) for admission into the IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) and top-ranked engineering colleges countrywide was held from September 1-6, even as the aggregate number of coronavirus positive cases in India crossed 4 million. There has been a continuous chorus for postponement of this exam and NEET, the national common medical colleges entrance exam, because of fear of examinees contracting the dread virus. Opposition leaders including Congress’ Rahul Gandhi, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, her Odisha counterpart Naveen Patnaik, DMK leader M.K. Stalin in Tamil Nadu and Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia had demanded postponement. However on August 17, the Supreme Court dismissed a public interest litigation writ seeking postponement of the two exams, stating a “precious year” of students cannot be wasted and life has to go on. By some accounts the world’s most competitive exam, IIT-JEE is held in two stages — Mains and Advanced. It selects students to be admitted into the country’s 23 blue-chip IITs, 31 NITs (National Institutes of Technology) and Centrally Funded Technical Institutions (CFTIs). IIT-JEE Mains was written by 9.58 lakh higher secondary school-leavers from September 1-6. The top-ranked 2.5 lakh students will become eligible to write the IIT-JEE (Advanced) exam scheduled for September 27 for mission into the IITs, NITs and CFTIs. The other common national exam — National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), a pen-paper exam — is scheduled for September 13 with 1.5 million school-leavers having registered to write it. The Central government’s National Testing Agency (NTA) claims that all arrangements were made to ensure smooth conduct of the exams, and that more than 99 percent of the candidates were given their first choice of centres and cities to write their exams with the number of examination centres increased to 660 from 570 for IITJEE, and 3,843 from 2,546 for NEET. Moreover, the number of examinees per shift was reduced from 1.32 lakh to 85,000 for IIT-JEE, with the number of shifts increased from eight to 12 to maintain social distancing norms. However according to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, because of national lockdown constraints, 75 percent of IIT-JEE (Main) candidates from West Bengal couldn’t write the exam held on September 1. “Out of 4,652 candidates registered for IIT-JEE, in Kolkata only 1,167 wrote the exam despite all arrangements made as per NTA directives,” said Banerjee at a media conference held on September 2. With her forecast that conditions were not conducive for holding these two national exams vindicated, the chief minister urged the Centre to reconsider the situation of the 75 percent who couldn’t write IIT-JEE this year. In West Bengal, 188 engineering colleges, including one IIT, one NIT and Jadavpur University (NIRF ranking 17) admit 32,700 engineering students in 1,588 courses every year. Moreover, 18 medical colleges 13 government-run, four private and one Central government-run — offer a mere 2,600 seats. Every year, 150,000-200,000 school-leavers from West Bengal (pop.…
