'Serious mistakes' in JEE, claims IIT professor

'Serious mistakes' in JEE, claims IIT professor

NEW DELHI: A senior IIT professor has pointed out ‘‘serious blunders’’ in this year’s IIT-JEE test that concluded on Sunday. He claims a clever student can get 93 marks without any preparation.

The claim was made by Rajeev Kumar, professor of computer science, IIT Kharagpur. IIT-Madras, which conducted the JEE has, however, disputed his claim. Kumar has been pointing out problems with JEE for the past four years and has even gone to the Delhi High Court.

Kumar has pointed out that Paper I had 28 questions each in maths, physics and chemistry, of three marks each, divided into four sections. He has raised concerns about Section II.

The section had five questions of three marks each, one or more correct answers (partial marking) and no negative marking for incorrect answers. Kumar says if a candidate darkened all the circles then he could deserve full credits.

"Since there is no negative mark for any wrong answers, one cannot deduct marks for darkening the wrong bubble (circle). All right bubbles are anyway marked, so one has all correct answers marked along with wrong bubbles for which there are no negative marks. Therefore, IIT cannot deduct marks. Thus a student can get 5X3 = 15 marks each in mathematics, physics and chemistry without applying his mind," he contends.

IIT-Kharagpur professor Rajeev Kumar’s claim that the IIT-JEE test has more flaws than meets the eye was contested by T S Natarajan of IIT-Madras, who is involved with the exam.

Disputing Kumar’s contention that a clever student can get up to 93 marks by darkening all options in answers to certain questions, Natarajan says, “If all four options are shaded for a question for which there are less than four correct answers then the candidate gets zero. To avail partial mark the number of choices shaded should not exceed the number of correct choices and must include at least one of the correct choices.”

Kumar, however, points out that the instructions say something else. “Nowhere do the instructions say that four choices cannot be correct. They also do not state that you cannot mark all the choices,” Kumar argues.

Kumar gives another example from section IV of paper II with two questions of eight marks each.

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