New Delhi, June 8 (IANS) Facing allegations of unfair marking in the entrance exam for aspiring architects, the Council of Architecture (CoA) has agreed to recheck the papers for those candidates who are not happy with the marks they received in the exam.1
In a notice on Thursday, the council said that the candidates can apply for the rechecking of the Drawing paper by paying a fee of Rs 750.
Several candidates had complained of scoring unexpectedly low marks in the paper, the result for which was announced on Wednesday.
The paper was part of the National Aptitude Test in Architecture (NATA) which was held on April 29, and consisted of two tests, the other being an online exam for Aptitude and Maths.
"The office of the Council is in receipts of request from some students regarding re-evaluation of their drawing papers," read the note from the CoA Registrar R. K. Oberoi.
"... based on requests from the students, the competent authority of the Council has decided to allow the candidates to file review of scores awarded to them with a view to ensure that no meritorious or deserving candidates is put to any inconvenience or deprived of justice due to technical glitches, if any," it added.
The results, first published on Monday, were found by the candidates to be riddled with mistakes in terms of scores, which they alleged were very low.
The council, attributing the error to a technical glitch, corrected the marks for the 'Aptitude' test, while asking the candidates to disregard the scores for Drawing and to wait for an updated result on June 6 (Wednesday).
However on Wednesday afternoon, the candidates were crestfallen when the council, in another communication, informed them that no re-evaluation will be done for the Drawing paper.
On Friday, CoA Vice President Vikas Garg told IANS that for the satisfaction of the candidates, this time, the papers will be checked by different faculty.
"Rechecking for those applying for it will be done by faculty members other than ones who checked the paper earlier... It will be done in two-three days. We want the entire process to end within 10 days," he said.
- 1. Students got SMS from the COA apologizing for uploading test scores which was wrongly updated. While first SMS said a rectified version of score card will be available for download on June 6, a second one said June 7. The website too, run alert that the final score card will be available for download on June 7.
TOI is in possession of copies of erroneous score card sent to students and SMS sent by NATA.?? However, it was not. “I checked the website again and again till 2 pm (final copy to be updated after checking with students again) and the scores were not updated. It still shows I secured zero in drawing. But I have scored 84 out of 120 in aptitude paper,” said Aqeel Ahmed Ustad, aspirant from Bengaluru.
Online petitions, letters and e-mails have already been sent to Ministry of Education said sources. “We have examples of some students who have secured seven out of 80 in drawing in NATA and 54 out of 70 in JEE architecture. There could be two possibilities—either some really incompetent students has correct drawings or the drawing marks have been juxtaposed between good students and incompetent ones. How can the best students get zero in drawing?” said Dion D’sa, who run Design Quotient Labs (a coaching centre for design students).
Students who have qualified got SMS from NATA saying: “Kindly ignore the score card those who have downloaded today, the final score card will be available on 6 th June 2018. You will get a communication to download the same. Regret for the inconvenience caused.”
Later they got another SMS saying: “This is to clarify to all of you that the results released yesterday through email and SMS holds good and your score card will be available for download on June 7, 2018. However, some of you downloaded a test score card yesterday (June 4) which was wrongly uploaded. Kindly ignore the same. We regret the error and apologize for the same.”
source: Times of India