Srinagar, 21 June Graduation hopefuls in Jammu and Kashmir can breathe a sigh of relief, as the J&K Education Department has announced that all those who showed interest in admission and applied for the Common Undergraduate Entrance Test (CUET) will be “accommodated” in the colleges of the UT.
Principal Secretary to the Government for Education Alok Kumar told Greater Kashmir that there were 142 degree institutions in Jammu and Kashmir offering a wide range of undergraduate majors. He said that a student who had registered for CUET but was unable to take the test would still be able to enrol in an undergraduate programme since colleges are located in different regions and are easily accessible to students from all across the country. “We will not deny anyone a chance to get admitted to an undergraduate course just because they were unable to sit in on the exam,” he stated. He further clarified that admittance will be determined on students’ performance in Grade 12.
When asked what would happen to Class 12 pupils who did not apply to CUET, he responded that no decision had been made at this time. Kumar said that depending on the merit scores in CUET, J&K will need to accept students from other states who want to study in J&K. “But there wouldn’t be too many of those candidates,” he said.
In July, when the CUET results are due to be released, the application process for undergraduate programmes throughout the nation will officially begin. 87309 people in J&K applied to be CUET examinees this year. The National Testing Authority changed the test dates and set up interim centres in J&K after becoming aware of the challenges facing applicants who had been assigned centres outside the UT. However, many applicants were unaware of the alterations and did not have access to J&K-based testing facilities. A year of schooling would be lost for many of these hopefuls since they were unable to travel to other states to take the admission exam.
Many students had trouble getting to test centres during the G20 conference, so Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha intervened to reschedule the exams. Many students blamed their exam absences on the overlapping test dates for different disciplines.
