T.N. Seema, MP, has alleged the role of the “north Indian lobby” in changing the benchmark for passing the National Eligibility Test (NET) conducted by the University Grant Commission (UGC) this time.
In a statement here on Saturday, she said nearly 70 per cent of the 43,957 candidates who had appeared for NET in June this year had failed to make the revised grade fixed by the UGC after the test was conducted.
At the time of the test, the marks specified for passing the test was 40-40-75 for the first, second, and third papers respectively in the case of general category candidates. The pass marks specified originally for OBC/OEC candidates were 35-35-68 and that for the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes candidates 35-35-60.
However, after the results were announced, the UGC announced a new stipulation that the general candidates should have obtained 65 per cent marks in aggregate while the OBC/OEC candidates should have scored 60 per cent and the SC/ST candidates, 55 per cent.
She said one-third of the total number of candidates who had won the NET nationwide was from three north Indian universities. Ms. Seema said she had written to Union Minister for Human Resources Kapil Sibal on the subject.
Keywords: UGC, NET, HRD Ministry
The working style of Kapil Sibal and Ved Prakash again proved that,
they are the black mark (Bottlenecks) of the development of current
Indian education system. If we see the results of the different
subjects, we can easly observed that, there is more than 400% increase
in the passing percentage of conventional subjects which are matching
with UPSC, and vocational subjects like, Labour Welfare, Tourism
Managements suffered a lot with decrease in passing percentage up to
60%. In order to hide their deficiency UGC and HRD changed the entire
pattern of examination with objective questions, and now fixed the
higher common cut-off. These all changes in UGC examination is very
shameful, which should changed as earlier with subjective answer. UGC
should increase their manpower and efficiency instead of playing with intellectual future of country. Mr. Sibal should know the difference
between objectivity of general competitive exams and subjectivity of
national eligibility test for lectureship.
UGC will remain as inefficient as ever, no matter what! Even if they
outsource the job of evaluating NET answer sheets completely to OMR
sheets and scanning machines. This refers to how they have calculated
cut offs for different categories for JRF for the exam conducted on 24
June 2012. Do they know that reservation is minimum and not maximum?
They took out "PwD" (Persons with Disabilities) from general and other
categories viz. OBC, SC/ST and then fixed them in a separate exclusive
3% category, in Philosophy cut off for PwD is higher than that of
general candidates and in Defence & Str. Studies that of OBC is higher
than that for general candidates. In Philosophy, Population Studies,
Public Administration, Kannad, Malayalam cut off for non-reserved
general candidates is less than those for candidates from reserved
categories! This is a clear cut case of illegalality with malafide
intention to prevent the people from reserved categories to qualify
even at the level of general merit.
Applicants were at liberty to choose any Test Centre in any where in the Indian sub continent
according to their convenience.Test Centres therefore have no relevance at all in relation to
fluctuation of NET result, since the protocol was of same standard everywhere.Perhaps the
hype in the pass percentage could be to the UGC sponsored coaching centres run by the
respective Universities which acted as a spring board.
NET qualification Norms were intact. The relevant lines in original notification of UGC NET
proclaims : "Only such candidates who obtain the minimum required marks in each Paper,
separately, as mentioned above, will be considered for final preparation of result. However,
the final qualifying criteria for Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) and Eligibility for Lectureship
shall be decided by UGC before declaration of result." The 'Answer Key' published has been
incorrectly depicted as a "result" while the fact was on the contrary.The wording "OEC" for
UGC -NET was incorrect.
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