WBJEE’s decision not to show answer scripts creates confusion

The decision taken by the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examinations (WBJEE) board not to allow the candidates to see their answer scripts has raised confusion among the medical and engineering aspirants. 

In its prospectus the WBJEE board has announced that students appearing joint entrance examination this year will not be allowed to see their answer scripts. 

It may be mentioned that in the last few years the WBJEE used to upload the Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheets of the candidates, the response sheets and an answer paper so that every candidate appearing the entrance examination can see how many marks they were supposed to get. 

The candidates had been able to see a scanned copy of their OMR sheets and hence they could easily check them with the response sheets and the answer script that were uploaded by the board in their website. 

Some guardians of the candidates appearing in the joint entrance examination this year have alleged that the decision was taken by the WBJEE in violation of the Supreme Court guideline. 

To bring transparency in the entire process of selecting the candidates various joint entrance boards from other states and also the boards conducting the national level examination started uploading the OMR sheets of the candidates. 

In our state also the WBJEE board adopted the policy so that the candidates can see what marks they were supposed to get. 

Even in the last year the board had uploaded the OMR sheets of all the candidates in their website and kept them there for three days. 

Senior officials in the WBJEE has said that they will not get enough time to upload the OMR sheets of the candidates as the result must be published within June 5 while the examination will take place on May 17. 

They claim that they were not getting enough time to upload all OMR sheets due to Assembly elections in the state. 

Pulakendu Ghosh, a guardian, said why the WBJEE was not taking any steps to provide the carbon copy of the OMR sheets to the candidates, which has been in practice in various other states. 

“It is the right of the medical or engineering aspirants to see their OMR sheets and hence the WBJEE must upload them so that transparency was maintained in the entire selection process. Other boards also make the answer paper of the students available in the public domain. If the board does not get enough time 

then why it does not appeal to the Supreme Court for an extension in the date of publication of the result,” Ghosh said. 

Palan Naskar, another guardian, said the WBJEE could upload the answer scripts of all the candidates within the available time if the board wishes to do it. It has no right to keep the candidates in dark. 

He also said the board did not even mention in the prospectus the minimum percentage of the marks the candidates have to secure to clear the joint entrance examinations. 

“According to the Medical Council of India guidelines, the general category medical aspirants had to secure 50 per cent marks in Physics, Chemistry and Biology while for the SC/ST candidates marks remained at 40 per cent in the entrance examination. Why the WBJEE did not mention it in their prospectus,” Naskar asked. 

Sajal Dasgupta, chairman of the WBJEE, said: “There is a delay in conducting examination due to elections and hence we will not be able to upload the OMR sheets of the candidates. The examination will be held on May 17 and we have to publish the result within June 5 as per the directives of the Supreme Court. We will be very cautious while examining the OMR sheets of the candidates so that no errors take place.”