WBJEE: Exam to be held on May 17, scheduled on weekday

Kolkata: The West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination 2016 (WBJEE) for engineering and medical is scheduled to be held on May 17.

For the first time, the exam is being conducted on a weekday to ensure that the crucial tests do not clash with the impending Assembly elections expected anytime between April 1 and May 15.

About 45,000-odd students are expected to appear for both the streams, and the exam will be held for an eight-and-half-hour nightmare.

WBJEE board chairman Sajal Dasgupta has made the announcement on Monday.

The practice till now was to hold the biological science test on a Saturday and physics, chemistry and mathematics tests on Sunday. Dasgupta claimed the board couldn't slot the exams over a weekend in May as all slots had already been booked for other competitive examinations like CLAT, JEE (Advance) and AIPMT.

"Nearly 300 educational institutions need to be engaged to conduct WBJEE 2016 throughout the state. So many centres may not be available due to the Assembly polls that could be held anytime between April 1 and May 15. These centres will then be required for the poll process. Hence, we had no option but to select a weekday. Since schools will have to be blocked, we did not want to inconvenience students for two days," Dasgupta explained.

WBJEE exam schedule, timings:

WBJEE board's schedule, the test for biological science (150 marks) will be from 9 am to 11.30 am.

It will be followed by the physics and chemistry paper (50 marks each) from 12.45pm to 2.45pm.
The mathematics test (100 marks) will be from 3.30pm to 5.30pm.

Changes in the number of questions:

Many tests are being crammed into a single day, the WBJEE board has decided to reduce the number of questions in various categories. "Weightage awarded in each section and total number of multiple-choice-questions (MCQs) has also undergone some change. The details are available on our website," added Dasgupta.