According to the Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, the credibility of national-level examinations was destroyed by Central government’s “gross inefficiency” and future of millions of students have been put at risk.
The Centre had to cancel the University Grants Commission-National Eligibility Test (UGC-NET) after National Testing Agency (NTA) failed to guarantee its integrity, Mr. Vijayan stated in a Facebook post on June 20th.
(The UGC-NET is conducted two times a year by NTA for qualifying Assistant Professorship, Junior Research Fellowship and Ph.D. courses.)
Mr. Vijayan said that this new controversy comes just after revelations were made about how a network of corruption compromised the transparency of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for Medical and Allied Courses.
According to him, so many students as well as their families had sacrificed substantial money, time and efforts to pass these crucial exams. The incompetence as well as lack of checks within NTA has left parents as well as lakhs of students in limbo.
He also posted on X (formerly Twitter): “It has been only some days since NEET-related issues went away; however, now education ministry has declared that exam compromised exam integrity henceforth UGC-NET will not take place again.” This repeated poor performance is unacceptable and it puts students into confusion while wasting public resources. The Central Government should immediately intervene in this crisis at NTA and make sure that our examination system becomes fairer transparent plus reliable”.
Mr. Vijayan added that Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Central government which was on “an overdrive to saffronise education” neglected its primary responsibility towards the students.
