Ministry no to JEE centre in Singapore

“The present government feels that there is no scope or place for IITs to conduct exams in other nations or set up centres there. They feel that there would be very few candidates who would be applying or appearing for exams from a foreign centre and it would turn out to be an expensive proposition overall. So the plan has been dropped,” confirmed an IIT Council member.

Last year,Prof S Sankararaman,Chairman of JEE 2008,IIT Madras,visited Singapore to examine the possibility of setting up a JEE 2009 centre there. In his report,he said that three schools — Global Indian International School,Delhi Public School and Raffles Junior College — had expressed interest in hosting the exam.

Sankararaman had further said that while there may be just 50-60 candidates at first,the figure would increase and it was “worth trying this experiment in Singapore”. The proposal was then sent to the HRD ministry.

Earlier,the ministry had also shot down the IITs’ plans to set up an offshore campus. Although Singapore,Sri Lanka and Mauritius had evinced interest in hosting the IITs’ overseas centres,the ministry had refused to grant permission. “Over 20 per cent of the faculty posts are lying vacant in the existing seven IITs. Besides,another eight new IITs are being established during the 11th Plan; the academic session in six new IITs has already commenced from 2008 and in the remaining two,it is proposed to commence from 2009. As the overriding priority of the IIT system has to be domestic expansion while maintaining standards,it may not be possible for the IITs to set up campuses abroad,at this stage,” the ministry had ruled.