Students appear for Diploma Engineering Examination at Women Polytechnic Institute near Chandrasekharpur in Bhubaneswar. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Aug. 6: Forty-year-old Sudhir Lakra from Dharamgarh in Kalahandi district had to wade through knee-deep water to reach Bhubaneswar so that and his son Rajesh Lakra could appear for the second Diploma Entrance Test (DET) today.

“We reached here yesterday with great difficulty. It is raining heavily in our district. Besides that I have asthma problems. Since there were no exam centres at Kalahandi, I had to travel all this way,” said Lakra.

Dilip Patel, parent of another student, who had reached from Rourkela said he had to shut down his shop for three days as he had to accompany his son to appear for the exam here.

“Not only did it affect my business, but I was also harassed by the auto rickshaw drivers here. When they learnt that we are new to the city, they charged us exorbitantly. When I argued, one of them threatened that he won’t let my boy sit for any exam,” he said. Parents, who accompanied their wards form across the state, were irked at the state government for not arranging centres in major cities of the state.

“Apart from these difficulties, we had to bear huge expenses which included travel cost, admission fee and hotel bills,” said Prakash Meher, another parent.

The first DET was held on May 5 across 165 centres of Odisha including five outside the state.

However, for the second DET that was held today, the state government had set up 19 examination centres located in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack. Of the total 39,313 diploma engineering seats, only 13,931 were filled up during the first DET.

Since the vacancies had hit an all time low this year, the institutes had been demanding a second DET. There are 119 engineering schools in the state, including 18 government institutes, with a total of 39,319 seats.

The technical education department had this year rejected the appeal to conduct a second DET citing ‘inadequacy of time’.

However, the Odisha Private Engineering Schools’ Association (Opesa) had approached the high court, which directed the government to conduct a second DET and complete the admission process by August 15.

“The state government had been discouraging us by saying that there will not be even 1,000 examiners for the second DET. But the response has been tremendous. There were about 7,000 registrations and had the government allowed centres across the state, the number of admissions would have definitely gone up,” said Saroj Sahoo, secretary of Opesa.

Officials in the government said they wanted to follow a strict academic calendar and repetition of entrance tests was delaying the start of academic sessions.

“The same people who are demanding a second DET will tomorrow complain that exams and results are delayed. Exams should not go on for months together one after another just on the pretext of filling up seats as meritorious students are ultimately to suffer because of the delays,” said a senior government official.