Delhi University council approves holding of entrance test for admission in undergrad courses

The Delhi University's academic council on Friday approved conducting entrance test for admissions from next year 2022.

Despite some members of the academic council giving a note of dissent, the proposal was passed and will now come up for discussion in the executive council meeting scheduled for December 17.

DU Vice-Chancellor Yogesh Singh had constituted a nine-member panel earlier, which had recommended that the varsity hold a common entrance test to ensure 'substantial objectivity' in the admission process.

The committee, formed under the chairmanship of Dean (examinations) DS Rawat, was supposed to examine the reasons for over and under admissions to undergrad courses, study the board-wise distribution of admissions in all undergrad courses, suggest alternate strategies for the optimal admissions in undergrad courses, and examine the OBC admissions with reference to the ‘non-creamy layer’ status.

It had analysed the data of admissions which are cut-off based and saw that it showed the highest intake of students from the CBSE Board, followed by the Kerala Board of Higher Secondary Education, Board of School Education, Haryana, ICSE and Board of Secondary Education Rajasthan.

“The committee is of the considered view that as long as undergraduate admissions in the university are cut-off based, there is no way that fluctuations, sometimes significant, can be avoided to maintain equity," the committee had said in a report.

Noting that the normalisation of marks of various boards may not stand the test of legality, if contested in a court of law, the report said that "neither cut-off based admissions nor admissions through normalisation of awarded marks by various boards are options which observe maximum objectivity in admissions".