The National Testing Agency (NTA), which is under scrutiny for multiple question paper leak controversies, failed to amp up its infrastructure for conducting tests in online mode in 2024, as its tender to multiply testing centres failed to take off, The Hindu has learnt.
The NTA had floated a tender in January this year, in order to increase its capacity of computer labs, which could house ‘nodes’, or seating spaces for candidates, in as many as 378 cities. “The work has not progressed as the tenders haven’t been finalised,” a top NTA official told The Hindu.
If the tender had gone through, the NTA had aimed to conduct exams across India in a standardised format by establishing online exam centres without any possibility of malpractice, officials added.
Safer computer-based testing
Currently, the NTA conducts at least six of its entrance exams through the relatively safer online or computer based test (CBT) mode. While the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE-Main) which paves the way for engineering college admissions is conducted by the NTA through the CBT mode, the National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test (NEET-UG) for medical aspirants is conducted in a pen-and-paper or offline mode. Pen-and-paper tests like NEET-UG are more vulnerable to paper leaks and other types of malpractice.
According to official data, the NTA currently has the infrastructure capability for approximately 600 CBT examination centres spread across India.
“It conducts CBT exams in multiple shifts with multiple sets of question papers due to the limited infrastructure availability as per the defined standards for conducting online exams,” another NTA official said.
Boosting capacity
“Currently, India does not have the capacity to conduct online exams for more than three lakh candidates in a single shift due to resource constraints,” V. Kamakoti, Director of IIT-Madras told The Hindu.
Aware of its restraints, the NTA had envisioned setting up more exam centres for online exams, first for 40,000 candidates per shift and then to increase the capacity to 2,00,000 candidates per shift, with a capacity of 275 computer nodes in each centre. Each node would seat one candidate.
This would mean gradually doubling the existing strength of 600 centres, by adding anywhere between 145 to 700 more centres. “But the tender never took off,” officials said.
“The NTA had planned to start with a provision of approximately 40,000 computer nodes per shift and will increase the nodes on mutual discussion or as per industry requirement. At present candidates from remote areas need to travel a long distance from their residence to reach the exam centres,” the tender floated by the NTA said.
‘Eye-opener’
Multiple proposals to administer NEET-UG exams through online mode were sent to the Ministry of Education but in vain, officials at the NTA told The Hindu. “Talks for administering the NEET-UG in CBT mode, similar to JEE (Mains), have been ongoing for at least five years now. The recent paper leak fiasco should serve as an eye-opener to change the format of the exams,” an NTA official quoted above said.
In the tender floated in January, the NTA had sought proposals from profitable private companies or central PSUs, who have had an average annual turnover of ₹100 crore for the last five years, and who have handled projects ranging from ₹20 crore to ₹40 crore, to bid for setting up and maintaining online exam centres.
In the tender, the NTA said that it wanted to set up this infrastructure in private and government higher education institutions and schools, government and semi-government buildings which would offer areas in their campuses for the development of new IT infrastructure by outsourcing it to a private company or a PSU.
Outsourced centres
The NTA wanted to outsource the work to bidders for end-to-end execution and running of online examination centres, including arranging infrastructure like furniture, electrification, air-conditioning, power back up, network cabling, internet with minimum 10 mbps speed, CCTV, and support manpower to operate and maintain centres, and even arrange a pool of invigilators which will be maintained by the bidders in individual cities.
The tender floated in January never took off, and is currently facing a delay of nearly six months. Had it been awarded, the NTA had expected the online centres to be live and running within three months of awarding the contract, and had said that successful bidders were expected to run the online exam centres for a five year period.
Published - June 30, 2024 12:30 am IST
