Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru (MS)

Bengaluru, Jan 10: According to the information given by minister for higher education G T Devegowda, on Wednesday, January 9, the Common Entrance Test (CET) will be an online affair from this year for engineering seats.

Nearly 1.8 lac students appear for this test every year in order to further their education in the fields of engineering or agriculture science or pharmacy.

G T Devegowda

G T Devegowda said, "Competitive examinations done by the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) are intended to be online tests. As a first step, the CET test will be conducted online from next year. However, there is no clear cut information whether this will be implemented in the year 2019 or 2020. It is also not clear whether students can take these tests at centers authorized by the government or the same can be done from the comfort of their homes or cyber cafes,”

There will be a meeting between the officials of KEA and the higher education department on January 19 to discuss the issues in detail, he informed.

The minister further said, "In our state, the universities and KEA already have the infrastructure to conduct CET online. But the software needs to be developed to implement the same,"

"Human errors like question paper leak, wrong or error-ridden question papers and evaluation of answer sheets can be done away with, if the online system is implemented," added G T Devegowda.

There are four papers of mathematics, chemistry, biology and physics in the CET examination. The students have the option to choose either biology or mathematics depending on the stream which they want to get into. The total marks that can be scored in each paper is 60.

If the proposal materializes, CET will be in the august group of other renowned competitive examinations like JEE (IITS) and NEET (medical) for undergraduates and CAT (MBAs) and other similar examinations at the post graduate level, which are being conducted in the online mode.