Common test: IIT-K to go it alone, IIT-D likely to follow suit

New Delhi: After IIT-Kanpur rejected the Centre’s ‘one-nation one-test´ proposal and decided to conduct its own entrance exam from next year, IIT-Delhi Alumni Association is pushing IIT-Delhi to follow the suit. A decision is expected to be taken next week when the Senate of IIT-Delhi meets here next week.

“In all likelihood, IIT-Delhi Senate seems to be geared up to follow the suit of IIT-Kanpur Senate,” IIT Delhi alumni president Somnath Bharti told PTI.

In its yesterday’s meeting, the Senate of IIT-Kanpur had said the IIT Council’s recent proposal on admissions is “academically and methodically unsound”.

The Senate, while deciding to go it alone, had also said the Centre’s ‘one-nation one-test´ proposal was in “violation of the Institutes of Technology Act (1961) and IIT Kanpur Ordinances (Ordinance 3.2 (Admissions)”.

HRD Minister Kapil Sibal on 28 May had announced that from 2013, aspiring candidates for IITs and other central institutes like NITs and IIITs will have to sit under a new format of common entrance test, which will also take plus two board results into consideration.

Sibal had claimed it was approved without dissent at the IIT Council meeting and had the backing of the senates of four of the seven Indian Institutes of Technology.

“The council consists of the IITs, the IIITs and the NITs. There was not a single dissent. It was unanimously adopted. Therefore, I went forward,” the minister had said.