Amid a row over the percentile issue, HRD Minister MM Pallam Raju will review on Wednesday the system of admission to IITs for which weightage is given to performance in board exams along with the entrance test. The meeting would be attended by senior HRD Ministry officials and IIT Delhi director RK Shevgaonkar.
"We would hold a review meeting on Wednesday to figure out the shortcomings if any and streamline the process," he told reporters in Delhi on Tuesday. The percentile system, which is one of the crucial conditions for selecting the students to the IITs, would figure prominently in the meeting amid reports of discrepancies in its calculation in various boards.
Raju, however, made it clear that they have no issues with the new format of the entrance test which gives weightage to the class XII board examination after the process of normalisation of the Board results. He said during his recent trip to Australia and New Zealand, he had received several mails from concerned students and parents and had forwarded them to the Ministry officials for examination.
CBSE chairman Vineet Joshi, who was accompanying him, was also sent back to monitor the admissions. Ministry officials said the Andhra Pradesh government has already raised the issue even the high court there is hearing a petition challenging the admission process. Reports suggest that close to 80 students have failed to make it to the IITs despite securing good ranks, thanks to the percentile system.
Admission to 16 IITs, under the new format, is based performance in JEE (Advanced). Students who have done well should also be among the top 20 percentile of successful candidates in class XII examination conducted by various school Boards. Meanwhile, admissions to the IITs have come to an end with officials saying that all seats in the general category have been exhausted.
Asked for his comment on Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's criticism about the alleged deficiencies in the country's education system, Raju said the passage of the Right To Education Act was one of the major achievements of the government which he did not mention. Seeking to hit back at Modi, he reminded the chief minister of the "miserable conditions" of the Sainik schools in Gujarat.
Raju said as Minister of State for Defence, he had written to all chief ministers for strengthening Sainik schools but the schools in Gujarat remained neglected. Though he agreed with Modi's argument that GDP in the education sector in India has not been to the mark, he said that the focus of the government has been on improving quality of education. Along with this, he said enhanced focus is being laid on skill development.
The deficiencies in the education sector, he said, is also being largely met by the private sector. Raju's comments came a day after Minister of State for HRD Shashi Tharoor had dismissed Modi's other argument that the research base in the country was of little use saying global giants have larger research activities in India than their own countries.
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