The CM wants a 20 percentile score of candidates who appeared in the board examinations, irrespective of the stream, to be computed.
Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy, on Tuesday, requested union minister for HRD Dr. M Pallam Raju for interim and long-term measures to help AP students who appeared for JEE-2013.
In a letter to the union minister, the CM urged for a review of a range of issues regarding admissions to engineering colleges. He said that the procedure "should be fair, transparent & rational, and should not give room for any kind of doubt or misgivings among candidates".
He said that "considerable heartburn is caused to thousands of bright students in Andhra Pradesh, by the revised pattern of the JEE 2013 examination conducted by the CBSE", for admissions into engineering colleges.
According to him, the problem with admission to NITs is that a 40% weightage is being given to the marks secured by students in class 12th, and this is giving rise to anomalous situations.
For instance, two students from Andhra Pradesh stood 1st & 2nd in the cuntry, respectively, in the JEE (Main) examination. However, after the 40% weightage consideration, they did not figure even in the top 300 of the selected candidates' list. The CM said that whatever be the merits of the normalization policy, "it is neither rational nor fair, if a student scoring more marks in both the 12th class exams & the JEE (Main) exam, obtains a lower rank, as compared to a student who gets lower marks in both the exams."
He also spoke about problems in admission to IITs. "As can be seen from the statement annexed, the top 20 percentile of the 12th class examination, at 91.89% cent for Andhra Pradesh, is the highest in the country, with the lowest being as low as 56.2%. As a result, many students from AP who cleared the JEE (Advanced) exam and got good ranks have not become eligible to join the IITs, as they obtained less than 91.89% marks in the class 12 examination."
The Chief Minister opined that this is discriminatory, and requested for interim and long-term measures to correct these anomalies.
He requested that as an interim measure for the current admissions, a 20 percentile score of all candidates who appeared in the board examination in all subjects, irrespective of the stream, be computed.
"This will enable some of the bright students who got high ranks in the JEE (Advanced) to secure admissions to the IITs," he said.
As a long-term measure, he urged a review of all the issues pertaining to the present admission procedure to engineering colleges, including a suggestion to abolish allotting weightage to Class XII marks & to select students based only on the all-India competitive exam only. (INN)