The national Testing Agency on Sunday announced to conduct a retest for over 1,000 candidates of CUET UG on July 19. The agency had earlier released the answer key of the Common University Entrance Test and announced that it will conduct a retest for CUET UG candidates between July 15 and 19 if any grievance raised by students about the conduct of the exam is found to be correct.
According to officials, the distribution of question papers in language not opted by the candidates is one of the reasons for the retest and the 1000-odd candidates are spread across six states.
“Some of the grievances include time loss due to distribution of wrong question paper,” a source told PTI.
While the agency notified the retest schedule, it remained silent on the declaration of the result which has already been delayed by over two weeks with the final answer key not yet notified.
Among the 1,000 CUET-UG aspirants who will be retaking the exam, 250 candidates are from Oasis Public School in Hazaribagh, which is also under investigation for the alleged leak of the NEET-UG question paper.
The official notification issued on Sunday stated that the grievances received from candidates up to June 30, 2024, regarding the CUET (UG) 2024 exam, as well as the complaints sent to rescuetug@nta.ac.in between July 7-9 (before 05:00 P.M.), have been reviewed.
“Based on these grievances, a re-examination will be conducted for those affected candidates on July 19, 2024, in the Computer-Based Test (CBT) mode,” the notification said.
The distribution of the wrong question paper also occurred during the NEET-UG exam conducted on May 5, prompting the NTA to grant grace marks due to loss of time. However, following protests and litigation in the Supreme Court, the agency cancelled the grace marks and announced an optional retest for the 1,563 affected candidates, of which 813 attended the exam on June 23.
Originally, the results for the undergraduate admission test were scheduled to be released on June 30, but the NTA postponed the results as it dealt with allegations of paper leaks involving NEET-UG, UGC-NET, and CSIR-UGC-NET.
“Initially it was decided that the results would be announced for the rest of the candidates before the retest and subsequently for the rest. However, we are now yet to take a final call on the same,” a source told PTI.
The CUET-UG exam, conducted in a hybrid mode for the first time across the country, was cancelled in Delhi a night before the scheduled exam day, citing logistical reasons. The exam was later conducted in the national capital.
The NTA had previously announced that the third edition of CUET-UG would be completed in seven days and that there would be no normalisation of scores as all exams would be conducted in a single shift. For 15 subjects, the tests were in pen-paper mode, while for the other 48 subjects, the exam was held in computer-based mode.
Over 13.4 lakh candidates registered for the common entrance test for admission to undergraduate courses in 261 central, state, deemed, and private universities this year. In the first edition of the exam in 2022, the test was plagued by technical glitches. Additionally, as a result of tests for a subject being conducted over multiple shifts, the scores had to be normalised during the announcement of results.