IIT alumni to lobby against new entrance test pattern

New Delhi: Upset over the new IIT joint entrance test pattern announced by the government, alumni of the institute in Delhi have decided to form lobby groups and meet the Prime Minister to get the decision rescinded.

In decisions taken at a meeting on Friday, IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Delhi Alumni Association decided to meet the Prime Minister next week to submit a memorandum with objections on the new pattern, the body's president Somnath Bharti said.

The association has also decided to file public interest litigation in various high courts within a week and try to get the petition heard before June 5, the day Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) is set to meet.

CABE, which has representatives from the central government and all state governments, is a key decision-making body of the human resource development ministry.

The new pattern, which combines IIT-JEE (Indian Institute of Technology-Joint Entrance Examination) and AIEEE (All India Engineering Entrance Examination), will be discussed in the meeting.

Somnath Bharti said senates of several IITs were not happy with the new pattern and the faculty of IIT-Kanpur had even decided to boycott the institute's convocation Saturday.

"It was felt that Mr. Sibal did not keep his promise made to different stake-holders of not going ahead (with the new pattern) if there is even one dissent and here five out of seven senates have given their dissent in writing but the human resource development ministry still went ahead," he said.

IIT-Kanpur senate will meeting on the issue Saturday.

The association demanded that senates should have the last word in taking a decision on the new pattern.

The new pattern, after the merger of AIEEE and IIT-JEE, will have two papers -- main and advance -- and will also include a fixed weightage from the class 12 board exam results.

The association, however, said school board scores should not be included in the entrance exam score, and rather a cut-off should be fixed as criteria for filling the form.

It has also decided to mobilise all senates, which are against the decision, to arrange a formal rejection of the ministry's proposal.