The controversy surrounding the proposed ‘one nation, one test’ module for engineering institutes has reached fever pitch with the Government calling for a special meeting with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Council to discuss the issue.

At a meeting held on Thursday, the IIT Delhi Senate followed the footsteps of IIT Kanpur and rejected the proposed admission procedure for undergraduate courses.

A release issued by the Institute said, “For the year 2013, IIT Delhi shall admit students to its undergraduate programmes through an examination which will be on a pattern similar to the one used in IIT JEE 2012.”

The release added that the Government’s decisions are against the stated position of the Senate of IIT Delhi and impinge on its autonomy, while they are academically unsound and procedurally untenable.

Following this resolution, which is also likely to be adopted by IIT Bombay and Kharagpur at their Senate meetings, the Human Resource Development Ministry has decided to call a special meeting with the IIT Council on June 27 to look into the concerns raised by the premier institutes.

A release from the HRD Ministry said, “The uncertainty faced by the student community, consequent to the resolutions of the senates of IIT Kanpur and IIT Delhi, requires to be addressed.”

Last week, representatives of the seven IITs met the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, and called for his intervention in the matter.

Speaking about the proposed change in admission procedure earlier, Prof K. Narasimhan, President of the All India IIT Faculty Federation, and Faculty at IIT-Bombay, said , “This is the right diagnosis but the treatment is wrong.”

He also said this module would increase stress for aspirants since they would get only one chance to make it into a good engineering institute.

He added that this would just help coaching institutes who would cash-in on the change to sell coaching classes for Class XII board exams along with entrance examinations, at higher rates.

> aesha.datta@thehindu.co.in

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