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Drawing parallels with the conduct of general elections, a high-level committee — set up by the Education Ministry and chaired by former ISRO chief K Radhakrishnan — has proposed a similar framework for holding important national entrance tests like the NEET, CUET and UGC-NET in order to ensure transparency and efficiency.
While the seven-member committee of experts, set up in June this year after the National Testing Agency (NTA) came under fire following the NEET-UG (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test-Undergraduate) paper leak, submitted its recommendations to the Ministry of Education in October, these were made public on Tuesday.
The panel has suggested that the Centre should collaborate with state governments to conduct these exams, mirroring the election process in which the entire state administrative machinery, down to the district collector, is roped in.
Each testing centre should have a “presiding officer” of the NTA, who will be the “overall in-charge” and will ensure that the process happens as per pre-defined protocol, similar to how polling booths are managed, it has said. The NTA is the Centre’s autonomous agency charged with the responsibility of conducting all national-level entrance tests.
The panel has recommended that before scheduled exams, the testing centres should be sealed in the presence of the district administration and police. These centres should be guarded until they are unsealed for the exam, in the presence of the district administration and NTA officials, it has said.
This, again, is similar to the election process where strong-rooms containing Electronic Voting Machines are locked and sealed in the presence of polling officials and candidates’ representatives, and remain guarded until they are unsealed on counting day.
For collaboration with the states and districts for “secure test administration”, the panel has recommended establishing state and district-level coordination committees, and suggested their composition and role.
State-level committees are to be headed by a nodal officer nominated by the Chief Secretary, and are to comprise a representative of the state police, a nodal officer nominated by the NTA Director General, a subsidiary Intelligence Bureau officer, and a state-level NIC (National Informatics Centre) officer.
These committees are to prepare “exam-specific strategies” for exams like NEET, CUET (Common University Entrance Test) and UGC-NET (University Grants Commission–National Eligibility Test) to “ensure fair, transparent and zero-error examinations.”
District-level committees are to be headed by the district magistrate and should comprise the head of the district police force, the district nodal officer of the NTA, an IB officer and NIC official.
The district-level committees are to identify suitable testing centres after scrutinising exams conducted there in the past, background analysis of the centre’s owners, previous incidents of paper leaks, and inputs of the IB or Local Intelligence Unit. The district committees should prepare a strategy for safe transportation of the question paper to the testing centres with adequate security of the police or paramilitary force.
So far, the NTA has been conducting its exams in government-run schools and colleges, institutes recognised by the AICTE, and private centres where third-party service providers conduct the exam. It relies heavily on TCS iON to conduct its computer-based entrance tests like JEE Main. The committee has suggested that reliance on such test delivery agencies be phased out in the long run, while boosting collaboration with centrally-run schools like Kendriya Vidyalayas and Navodaya Vidyalayas to develop digital infrastructure that will allow them to function as computer-based testing centres.
Additionally, the committee has advocated a “digi-exam” system inspired by the DigiYatra model, to verify candidates and ensure only registered individuals can appear for the tests. It suggests that primary data identifying the candidate be recorded at the application stage as a ‘one-time entry’ and biometric data be recorded at the testing centre before the test begins.
The safety of the question paper and the OMR sheets are to be ensured by the NTA official till the exam is over. Computer-based testing centres are to be sanitised by a third party and rechecked by the NIC and NTA representatives. With the panel recommending continuous monitoring of all candidates through CCTVs during the test, it has also suggested setting up a CCTV monitoring centre at the district level, manned by officials of the NTA and the district administration.
The committee has said the NTA “should primarily conduct entrance examinations”, and enhancing its scope for other exams may be considered after its capacity is augmented.
Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Tuesday said the NTA would only conduct entrance exams for higher education, and not exams for recruitment to services.
Besides higher education-related entrance tests, the NTA also holds exams for recruitment in central universities and some state government bodies. Such recruitment exams, Pradhan said, will no longer be the NTA’s focus as the government wants it to be a “specialist” focussing on higher education exams.
On NEET, Pradhan said: “The Health Ministry is the administrative ministry. The appropriate mode for the exam, computer-based or pen-and-paper…will be fulfilled based on what the Health Ministry recommends. We are ready for both. The NTA is the service provider. The administrative ministry will decide in which mode the exam will be conducted.”
The committee of experts has been tasked with making recommendations on reforms in the mechanism of the exam process, improvement in data security protocol and the structure and functioning of the NTA.
