[ Chukhu Indu ]
ITANAGAR, 15 Jul: Students of Arunachal Pradesh appeared for the first phase of the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) held at Rajiv Gandhi University (RGU) and the NERIST on Friday.
The first phase of the CUET is being held on 15, 16, 19 and 20 July. The second phase will commence in August.
Only 29 out of 163 students appeared for the exam at the RGU and the NERIST examination centres.
The exam was held in two sessions: morning and afternoon.
“The announcement of exempting the universities in the Northeast, which also includes RGU, from conducting the CUET due to operational difficulties might be one of the reasons behind the low number of turnout,” said an exam observer at the RGU centre.
A student from East Kameng district informed that she received the examination notification on Thursday – only a day prior to the exam.
“Since I was updated at the last moment, I could not book a ticket for the government bus service. I did not have enough pocket expenses to travel. However, with the help of a brother, I reached Itanagar last night at 11:30 pm from Seppa on a scooter,” she said.
The student also said that “the process of waiting for the examination date and centre was quite tiring as one stays in suspense.
“Moreover, the internet does not function well in the district and one has to rely on information received through emails,” she said.
A guardian of one of the students said that “there is a lot of confusion in the examination schedule. We still have not received the examination slot for the second phase.”
The father of a student in Itanagar said that his daughter had been preparing for the first-phase exam. “However, on Friday, she wrote the second-phase paper, which is scheduled to be conducted in August.”
The father also said that the “combination of similar subjects should have been consecutively conducted in one single slot.”
Officials at the RGU examination centre informed that they were notified about the dates and the venues of the exam only two days back, “and everything was monitored online from New Delhi.”
The National Testing Agency is conducting the examination, starting from this session.
Earlier, on 9 May, central universities, including those in the eight northeastern states and the HNB Garhwal University in Uttarakhand, were exempted from conducting the CUET and were directed to conduct the exam from the next academic session onwards.
