NEW DELHI: UGC chairman M Jagadesh Kumar asserted that all central universities will have to use Common University Entrance Test (CUET) scores to admit students to undergraduate programmes this year.
He said the CUET, in all likelihood, will be conducted in the first week of July.
“From the 2022-23 academic year, the National Testing Agency will be conducting the CUET for undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. All the central universities will have to consider CUET scores for admissions to their programmes,” Kumar said at a press briefing.
There are 45 central universities funded by the University Grants Commission (UGC).The syllabus of the CUET will be mirrored with the Class 12 model syllabus of the NCERT, Kumar said.
The CUET will have Section 1A, Section 1B, general test and domain-specific subjects. Section 1A, which will be compulsory, will be in 13 languages and candidates can choose the language of their choice.
The options are English, Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. Section 1B is optional and for students who want to opt for another language apart from the ones that are a part of Section 1A. Some of the languages on offer are French, Arabic, German, etc, he added.
The UGC chairman said the reservation policy of the universities will not be impacted due to the CUET.
“The universities can enroll candidates for the general seats as well as for the reserved seats on the basis of CUET scores. It will not impact the existing admission and reservation policy that are in accordance with the Ordinances of the varsity,” he said.
Explaining further, he said if a university has a certain percentage of seats reserved for local students, it will be able to retain that.
“But the thing is that these students will also have to take admission through CUET,” he added.
Central universities like Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) reserve half of their seats for the minority students. Both the universities are yet to take a call on CUET.