HRD Ministry: Single body to conduct JEE, NET, CAT

The Union Human Resource Department Minister (HRDM) Pallam Raju, will seek the permission from the state education ministers to permit a single centralised testing body responsible for conducting JEE, NET, CAT, CMAT and GATE under it and providing candidates an opportunity to sit for a test more than once in a year.

The meeting with the respective state education ministers will be held on April 02, 2013. The National agency for testing will delver the national level exams through a dedicated group of professionals, there by sparing the teachers from the testing exercise. It will do research for preparing question papers, administer and conduct exam.

If the proposal gets passed holding tests and assessment under the body is likely to become prerequisite for the public and private sector engineering, medical and other colleges, universties and institutions for admissions and recruitment.

While the CBSE has prepared a model with an objective, structure and functions for the body the government intends to start in a small way by conducting the UGC-NET exam as early year HRD minister MM Pallam Raju has said that joining the body would not be binding.

A senior HRD Ministry official said, "What we want is a structured, streamlined admissions system, speaking on condition of anonymity, "That doesn't have to be a single examination platform that is unacceptable to some,"

The single test plan was pushed aggressively by Raju's predecessor at the ministry, telecom minister Kapil Sibal, with the aim of ending the multiple entrance tests students currently need to take to apply to different institutions across the country. Sibal's team prepared a proposal for a law to set up a national testing agency that would conduct a single aptitude test and subject specific tests.

But that plan faced strong opposition from several institutions that accused the government of infringing on their autonomy, and from state governments who alleged that the ruling UPA was encroaching on the powers guaranteed to them in the Constitution.

The new Pallam Raju blueprint not only looks at creating the testing agency through an executive order instead of a law - something that the new minister mentioned at a press briefing last week - but also acknowledges that a single test poses challenges as an education policy.

Most states hold their own admission tests for professional institutions, apart from the centrally-conducted All India Engineering Entrance Examinations.