The Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union on Monday wrote to the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), seeking a judicial inquiry into the alleged irregularities in the online entrance examinations.
The university had outsourced the conduct of the examination to the National Testing Agency (NTA) this year.
The JNUSU in the letter alleged that questions were copied from websites and other sources and that the entrance examination paper of BA first year Cluster 1 of Russian, Spanish, French and German held on May 28 were allegedly found to be circulating on WhatsApp.
The students’ body also raised questions about why answer keys of the multiple-choice question format paper were demanded months before the exam and given to the NTA.
“For the first time in JNU’s 50 years, the university outsourced the evaluation of result to a private agency at a higher price. This has raised suspicions about the intentions of the JNU administration over the shift to online mode and the cost of examination that increased by 300%. This cost escalation and financial mismanagement are costing students’ research, seminars and academic engagement internally,” the JNUSU said.
Previous model
The students’ body asked the MHRD to direct JNU to immediately restore the previous model of offline examination, which had a suitable mix of subjective and objective questions, as it is an academically superior model designed to assess students on various parameters of comprehension, writing and analytical skills and hence, better suited for a research-oriented university like JNU.
