With the Mother Teresa Women’s University (MTWU) releasing the results for Tamil Nadu State Eligibility Test (TNSET) 2018 on Friday, a number of applicants and activists have raised concerns over alleged lack of transparency in the publication of results.
In contrast to the National Eligibility Test (NET), they have pointed out that MTWU has not made public the full list of candidates who cleared the examination and the cut-off marks for each of the 26 streams (subjects) and each reservation category.
TNSET 2018 had two papers - a general paper for 100 marks and a subject-wise paper for 200 marks. According to the notification issued by MTWU for the exam, top 6 % of the candidates who score at least 40 % aggregate marks (for General and Creamy Layer in Other Backward Communities) or 35 % aggregate marks (for other categories) will be declared qualified.
“However, the university has not even given basic details about how many candidates appeared in each stream and how many have cleared. This leads to suspicion about manipulations in the selection,” said S. Swaminathan, advisor to Society for Quality Education and Research, a registered society working for addressing issues in higher education system.
Alleging that there were similar issues in the conduct of TNSET by MTWU in 2016 and 2017 also, he said one of the candidates who appeared in 2016 had to approach State Information Commission to get details on number of candidates who cleared the exam in his stream.
A. Velayutham, a candidate who took TNSET in Library and Information Sciences stream, said the results did not show marks scored in each paper. “The result only shows the total score out of 300, the cut-off mark set for my stream under my reservation category and whether I am qualified or not,” he said.
“In NET, cut-off marks for every reservation category in every stream along with full list of cleared candidates can be seen by everyone,” he added.
MTWU was also criticised this year for allegedly ‘copying’ questions from the question papers of previous years’ NET exam.
2,779 cleared
G. Valli, Vice-Chancellor, MTWU, said that 2,779 of the 44,288 candidates, who sat for the exam, have cleared it.
Countering allegations about lack of transparency, she said that all the details will be made available in the website in a matter of few days. “There are some procedures involved. Once that is completed, we will upload all the information,” she added.
