The alumni of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Delhi will move the court against the Union government's decision to hold a common entrance test for admission to undergraduate engineering courses from 2013.
The decision was taken at a meeting of the IIT-Delhi Alumni Association here on Friday. The participants expressed fears that the emphasis on weightage to the school board results and the Joint Entrance Examination (Main and Advance), proposed under the new format, would add to the pressure on students rather than reduce it.
Within a week, the alumni will file public interest litigation petitions in various High Courts, so that they could be heard before June 5, when the Central Advisory Board of Education will meet.
The meeting demanded that status quo be maintained till 2014 and said the new system would result in further mushrooming of coaching centres.
The association said it should be allowed full control of the examination and admission and school marks should act as a cut-off and not given any weightage. The new system has also been rejected by the All-India IIT Faculty Federation.
The new system was announced on May 28, after a meeting of the Joint Councils of the IITs, the National Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Information Technology with the Federation of Faculty of the IITs. Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal chaired the meeting.
The association, representing more than two lakh graduates of the IITs, said the government had “no right to impose a common entrance exam on the IITs.”
The association and the Faculty Federation sought more time to discuss the implications of the new system and said the IIT Senates should have the final say and their decision could not be overridden by the IIT Council.
The alumni have planned to meet the Prime Minister.
“HRD Minister Kapil Sibal did not keep his promise, made to different stakeholders, of not going ahead if there is even one dissent, and here 5 out of 7 Senates have given their dissent in writing, but the HRD [Ministry] still went ahead. The IIT Council is an advisory body for admission process, and [the] Senates enjoy the conclusive authority over the admission process as per the IIT Act,” they said in a statement.
