College Service Commission seeks UGC nod for 3 new SET subjects

Kolkata: The West Bengal College Service Commission (WBCSC) has sought permission from the University Grants Commission (UGC) for including three new subjects in State Level Eligibility Test (SET) from next year.

The commission, which presently hosts recruitment tests in 30 subjects, for assistant professors in government-aided colleges, has applied for inclusion of Environmental Science, Management and Arabic.

"We are hopeful that UGC will give us the necessary nod in this regard," said Dipak Kar, Chairman of WBCSC, adding that the number of subjects have increased from 23 to 30 in the past five years.

Early this year, a delegation of young teachers had urged Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to add Environmental Science at an administrative meeting in Burdwan.

After every three years, the WBCSC is required to forward application to the UGC for accreditation so that it can continue holding the SET examinations. This year, the application to UGC was forwarded through the Higher Education department in September.

"We will publish the notification for holding SET examinations for 2021, soon after we get the UGC nod for accreditation," said a senior WBCSC official.

Sources in WBCSC said the UGC is satisfied with the way it has gone forward in publication of results for this year's examination in July amidst the pandemic.

This year, 48600 candidates had appeared for the SET examinations held on January 19. As per UGC norms, 6 per cent of the candidates appearing for the examination are declared qualified. Going by this rule, the number of qualifying candidates should have been 3,000. But, WBCSC declared a qualifying list of 3,500 candidates this year due to a tie in the cut-off marks of 500 examinees.