Opposing the new format test for admission to the IITs, the All-India IIT Faculty Federation has asked the Centre to defer its implementation by a year in the interests of the students. It contended that the new formula has several inherent “flaws.”
The forum has urged the government to conduct IIT-JEE in the current format for the next year as well.
The federation held a meeting in the city on Friday to muster support against the new format and asked Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal to consider implementing the new test from 2014, after conducting a “wide-ranging debate”.
Federation president Prof Sanjeev Sanghi of IIT-Delhi, said there was no time for students to adapt to the changes at this stage.
He said it was not fair to give weightage to marks secured in the Board exams in the new test.
“There are over 40 Boards that conduct 10+2 exams, and each has its own exam pattern and evaluation method,” Prof Sanghi said. “How can officials normalise marks awarded by the Boards? Even the Indian Statistical Institute has expressed its inability to devise a normalisation formula.”
Stating that the new test will lead to problems, he said, “The decision to select the top 20 per cent of students based on 10+2 results is flawed. Moreover, there are different reservation procedures for different states. What if only a few students from a particular community, or no one from some communities, figure in the list,” he asked.