State govt holds meeting on bringing forward dates of JEE

Kolkata: The state Higher Education department held a meeting to elicit opinion from the engineering institutions across the state, on bringing forward the dates for holding and publication of results of West Bengal Joint Entrance Examinations.

More than 40 percent seats in the engineering colleges across the state have remained vacant this year, as many of the students have migrated to institutions outside the state with the state JEE examination being held and results published much later than similar examinations in other states.

Majority of the officials present in the meeting proposed that the Joint Entrance examination should be held in February-March and results should be published in April-May, ahead of the results of state Higher Secondary Examinations.

However, a senior official of West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education pointed out that publication of JEE results before HS may not be a good idea as if a student seeks admission to a college after cracking JEE and fails to clear HS, then his/her admission will automatically be cancelled.

An official of a reputed engineering institution in the state said that it is very rare that a student cracking JEE fails in the HS. "However, to ensure that there is no complexity, we may go for provisional admission," the official reasoned.

Vice-Chancellor of MAKAUT Saikat Maitra said: "We should also make attempts to popularise the wide array of engineering courses that are offered in our state, so that students from other states are attracted to our colleges."

MAKAUT churns out around 35,000 graduates from its 90 engineering colleges and 110 professional colleges affiliated to it across the state.

The meeting that was chaired by Principal Secretary Higher Education Manish Jain, was attended by representatives of Association of Professional Academic Institutions (APAI)-the sole representatives of all the self-financed engineering and technological institutions in Bengal, Jadavpur University, principals of a number of private engineering colleges and Chairman and Registrar of West Bengal Joint Entrance Examinations Board.

More meetings on this issue will follow as the department wants to make this effective right from the 2020 academic session.