1 lakh take OJEE

BHUBANESWAR: Close to a lakh candidates took the Odisha Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE) across the country on Sunday. Barring minor glitches due to which some students could not appear for the entrance, the examination went off smoothly. The test was held across 181 centres __ 145 in the State and the rest outside. In Kolkata centre, one candidate was held for impersonation. He has been handed over to the local police. Although there was no report of any disturbance during the exam, in Bhubaneswar close to two dozen candidates could not take the test which was attributed to wrong coding in the application forms. The students had reported in about three centres in the City. The candidates were to appear for the B. Tech four-year programme but had filled in the code for B.Tech three-year course meant for Lateral Entry students. Since they turned up to take the entrance for the four-year programme, they were barred. As per the procedure, the four-year programme carries the code 01 whereas for lateral entry course, it is 51. When the candidates fill in the optical mark recognition (OMR) application forms, the computer generates an admit card basing on the codes provided in it. The admit cards are despatched 15 days in advance. “We had received at least 150 such complaints on Saturday and had addressed the problems and issued the candidates fresh admit cards. Those candidates could take the test without any hassles but in case of these 25, they turned up at the examination centre where nothing could have been done,” said Dr Sitaram Mohapatra, JEE Committee Vice-Chairman. This problem apart, Mohapatra said, the examination witnessed no glitch whatsoever. “According to the latest reports, close to a lakh students have taken the entrance and we now have the task to declare the results at the earliest,” he added. Of the one lakh applicants, 68,000 are vying for engineering subjects. The results are expected by last week of this month. Candidates on the merit list will be sent their rank cards by June second week and counselling is expected to begin by end-June or first week of July. The target for commencing the academic session is August. The JEE Committee is keen to wrap up the counselling soon in view of the large-scale vacancies in the engineering colleges last year.