The West Bengal Government today expressed concern against the single entrance examination for all engineering colleges from 2018 and urged the Centre to scrap its proposed move.
State's Education Minister Partha Chatterjee said that he had already sent a letter to the Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar opposing the Centre's move to scrap state engineering entrance exams and pave the way for a central entrance test for admissions to all engineering colleges.
In his letter, Chatterjee said that he had requested Javadekar to reconsider the decision to begin the single entrance exam for all engineering colleges from 2018 onward and dismiss the proposal.
Describing the proposed move as Centre's intrusion into state's jurisdiction, Chatterjee said that this should not have been done in a federal structure as the state governments were not consulted before initiating such move on an issue which falls under Concurrent List.
"The West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination Board - the nodal body conducting the JEE engineering tests in the state is an established agency set up by us. There have been no problems in conducting the engineering exams. Then why does the Centre want to discontinue this existing system?" the minister asked.
Chatterjee also said that there is no parity in the syllabus among the various boards.
"Even the marking pattern is different. The questions will be prepared based on the syllabus taught by CBSE. How can our students compete at the moment if no standardisation of the syllabus is done?" Chatterjee said.
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