NET hopefuls left high & dry

NEW DELHI: Hundreds of candidates aspiring to sit for UGC's National Eligibility Test on Sunday were in for a rude shock when they were turned away from the examination centre. They had reached Jamia Millia Islamia to take the test at 9.30am on Sunday as indicated on their admit cards. Much to their chagrin, they were informed by Jamia officials that their actual exam venues were spread across the city and the university was only supervising them. They were not allowed to sit for their exams and by then it was too late to rush to their original test centres, some of which were as far as Paschim Vihar, Rohini and Vivek Vihar. They instead protested outside the university with the police standing guard.

"Our admit card mentioned our test centre as Jamia succeeded by a code number. So I just headed to the university to take the test like many others. There they told me that my test centre was actually in Vivek Vihar in east Delhi which they had never mentioned before," said one of the candidates, Sharad Sharma. He added, "The University should take responsibility for this goof. They did not even put this information up on the university's website. While we tried to convince the authorities, many went back disappointed. Many candidates had even come from other cities to take the test."

NET is an entrance exam for postgraduate students who wish to qualify for teaching at university level or research fellowships. Jamia Millia Islamia is responsible for conducting NET in Delhi. This year, 24,294 candidates were registered to appear for NET in 65 subjects across 39 examination centres in the city. As many as 26 centres were outside the Jamia campus which many candidates were not aware about.

Another candidate, Divya Dwivedi, had to go back without taking the test as she had been allotted a centre in Paschim Vihar without her knowledge. "This time, the university gave us the admit card at the time of submitting the form. My admit card mentioned the test centre as Jamia Millia Islamia but there was another column for the venue which was left blank. We had also submitted a selfaddressed envelope. But the university never got back with any information on the venue," said Divya. "We had been checking the website but there was no information on it till Saturday night. There must be at least 200 candidates who were stranded," she added.

However, Jamia officials insisted that there were only 35 candidates who could not take the test because of confusion about the test venues. "The admit cards mentioned the test centres as Jamia with a number. For instance, if Jamia-17 was the engineering block, Jamia-18 could be Kalkaji. The information of test venues had been up on our website for at least a couple of weeks. Many candidates seemed to have come without checking for the test venue allotted to them.

There were only some centres within the campus," said Simi Malhotra, media coordinator, Jamia Millia Islamia. Sharma added, "We were all preparing to become university teachers or researchers. We are not illiterate . The truth is that there was no information available at all. I am planning to file a writ petition in the high court."

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