JEE & NEET frauds keep NTA on its toes

Manash.Gohain@timesgroup.com

New Delhi:  23.10.2020

Forged marksheets, alleged discrepancies in OMR sheets and fraudulent mails are keeping the National Testing Agency (NTA) on its toes since the declaration of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate) 2020 and Joint Entrance Examination (Main) results.

The education ministry, health ministry and NTA have received 30 complaints, majority of them related to NEETUG, about “discrepancies” that subsequent investigation proved to be cases of forgery. NTA has decided to file police complaints about these.

Indicating the pressure to perform and the need to deflect parental anger, some candidates have been resorting to forgery of the marksheets of the NEET-UG 2020 and JEE (Main) to show they scored higher marks.

According to documents accessed by TOI, the faking was so smartly carried out that NTA had to retrieve the answer booklets and take a re-look. In one case a student mailed to NTA attaching a forwarded mail from the agency showing his results, however, the marks are different. “On investigation, we found out that the documents to be forged as the scores mentioned had not been issued to any candidate,” said a senior NTA official.

There are cases where candidates changed the percentile scores of two of the three question sections and the overall rank in NEET and then got their parents to send emails to the education and health ministries and NTA claiming that they had been issued two different marksheets. However, simple errors nailed these lies.

“All genuine grievances will be entertained by the NTA. However, manipulated and fabricated cases will be viewed seriously and NTA will be forced to take legal action against such candidates including cancellation of their candidature or other unscrupulous agents representing such candidates,” said Vineet Joshi, director general, NTA.

According to Dr S Kumar, chancellor, Sri Devaraj Urs University, Kolar, medical admissions has been a “deep racket since 2005,” which however changed after NEET was introduced.

Full report on www.toi.in

JEE 2021 to be held in more regional languages

In order to widen the reach of JEE (Main), the Joint Admission Board (JAB) on Thursday decided to offer the computer-based test for admission to engineering and architecture courses in more regional languages. JEE (Main), which is also the eligibility test for JEE (Advanced) for admission to IITs, is currently offered in English, Hindi and Gujarati and its first cycle of 2021 is likely to be held in January.

The JAB meeting discussed the modalities for offering the test in regional languages and decided on a two-pronged approach. The first formula is that JEE (Main) can be offered in regional languages of states which conduct their local entrance exams for engineering and architecture courses. The second formula is that the test will be offered in the language of any state which is part of JEE (Main) and wants it to be included. TNN Full report on www.toi.in