Bhubaneswar: Six days after the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) had announced the date for Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Main on April 4 next year for engineering and architecture streams, the students of Odisha are in a state of uncertainty as the state government is yet to decide on whether the admission of the students would be made in different engineering colleges in the state through JEE Mains or the Odisha Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE).
“We are in two minds whether to appear OJEE or JEE Mains as the Odisha government is yet to make a decision in this regard”, said a student.
Speaking on this, Tushar Kant Nath, OJEE chairman said, “The government is seriously working on it and there are various aspects to be taken into consideration while making a decision about it. Once we get the clarification from the government, we would inform the students and parents about the guidelines for admission for the 2016 in various government and private institutions”.
Odisha, like other states, has been participating in the JEE Mains since the last two years but following the demand of Odisha Private Engineering College Association (OPECA) to conduct OJEE, the government had sought suggestions from the Law department and Advocate General for this year’s course of action.
In reply, both the Law department and the Advocate General had stated that the state government should conduct OJEE as per the rule under Section-3 of Odisha Professional Education Act.
“Giving respect to the law of the land, OJEE should be conducted this year”, said OPECA secretary Binod Das.
However, as per the proposal of Cabinet sub-committee, Odisha can participate in JEE Mains if it wants to.
Students of Odisha will be eligible to participate in the admission process of 18 IITs, 31 NITs, 18 IIITs, 34 deemed universities, 11 central technical institutions, ISM-Dhanbad besides several engineering colleges in the State if they qualify JEE Mains.
As per the release of CBSE, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Nagaland and Odisha have been included in JEE Mains.
As per the CBSE notification, the JEE Main offline examination for engineering stream would be held on April 4 between 9.30 am and 12.30 pm while for architecture stream, it will be from 2 pm to 5 pm.
The online JEE Main examination would be held on April 10 and 11.The students have to apply and deposit their examination fee online through JEE website www.jeemain.nic.in
The results of the examination would be announced on June 18.