Srinagar, June 21: Much to the reprieve of graduation aspirants from Jammu and Kashmir, the J&K Education Department has said that every aspirant who had expressed interest in admission and applied for Common Undergraduate Entrance Test (CUET) will be ‘accommodated’ in the colleges of the UT, citing that the number of seats available is adequate for the candidates.
While speaking to Greater Kashmir, Alok Kumar, Principal Secretary to Government (Education), said that there were 142 degree colleges in Jammu and Kashmir with a variety of undergraduate courses. He said that the colleges were spread across districts and were accessible to students from all areas, and therefore it would not be an issue to provide an undergraduate seat to an aspirant who had applied for CUET, but could not appear in the exam due to some reason. “We will not deny anyone a chance to get admitted to an undergraduate course just because they were unable to sit in the exam,” he said. He further said that the admission would be done on the basis of marks obtained in Class 12.
Asked about those students who have passed Class 12 exam but had not applied for CUET, he said, no decision had been taken yet. Kumar said that J&K would also need to accommodate the students willing to study in J&K, and belonging to other states, based on the merit scored in CUET. “However, those candidates would not be too many,” he said.
The CUET results are expected to be declared in July, and would kick-start the admission to undergraduate courses across the country. This year, 87309 candidates had applied for CUET from J&K. The National Testing Authority, after taking cognizance of the difficulties staring in the face of candidates who had been allotted centers outside the UT, made modifications in exam dates and created temporary centers in J&K. However, many candidates had been left out of the changes, and were not provided exam centers within J&K. Many of these candidates could not travel to other states for appear in the entrance test and faced a waste of one year of their academic career.
In addition, exam dates were also changed after the intervention of Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, as many students faced difficulties in reaching centers during the G20 summit. Overlapping in examination dates of various subjects had also been raised by many students for having failed to appear in an exam.