Bhubaneswar, March 12: The technical education department has decided to reintroduce negative marking for the Odisha Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE) from this year.
The practice was discontinued in 2013. The OJEE, which draws candidates for the MBA, MCA, Bpharm, ayurvedic and homeopathy courses, will be held on May 8. Earlier, it used to select candidates for BTech courses. Now that Odisha has joined the JEE (mains), the OJEE will be restricted to candidates seeking lateral admissions to BTech second-year courses.
On the reintroduction of the negative marking provision, OJEE chairperson Tusharkant Nath said: "Such evaluation will ensure that deserving students, who have actually prepared for the examination, get justice. The ranks will be calculated according to efficiency, knowledge and speed of the students."
The Telegraph had, on July 14, 2012, published a report "Best or naught, seats for all" - that revealed how students with scores like - 59 out of 720, had secured engineering seats that year. So had 610 others, who had secured negative marks. The results revealed that more than one-third of the 63,634 students, who had taken the test, got ranks despite scoring in single digits (0-9) and became eligible for admission into any of the engineering colleges of the state.
This had led to wide-scale criticism in all quarters, following which the department, on January 1, 2013, scrapped the negative marks for the OJEE-2013.
Nath said the decision was taken to avoid marks given to students on the basis of "wild guessing" and ensure "justice" to the deserving students. "In the OJEE, students have to appear for multiple-type questions and choose one answer among four. They simply need to work out solutions on a rough sheet of paper and choose one of the four answers. We do not wish to give away marks to those, who have ticked the right answer based on sheer guessing," said Nath.
Nath said negative marking was prevalent in all-India entrance tests such as the JEE and the All-India Pre-Medical Test (AIPMT). While four marks are awarded to each correct answer, one is deducted for each wrong answer.
However, the OJEE has no longer been conducting the tests for BTech first-year since 2014 after the state joined JEE (mains). Similarly for medical admissions - MBBS and BDS - the state has opted for the AIPMT.
