IIT-JEE paper had wrong questions

Students appearing for IIT-JEE, the country's top entrance exam, may not have expected this -- wrong questions. Questions worth 14 marks were found to be having errors in the entrance examination for 2012.

Updated on: May 15, 2012, 01:45:47 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Students appearing for IIT-JEE, the country's top entrance exam, may not have expected this -- wrong questions. Questions worth 14 marks were found to be having errors in the entrance examination for 2012.

IIT-JEE examination was conducted on April 8 and the answer-keys to the question papers were declared earlier this month after the evaluation of all optical response sheets (ORS).

Scrutiny of answer-sheets has revealed that four questions were wrongly set. Of the four questions, all candidates were awarded zero marks for two questions and there was no negative marking for the remaining two.

The "wrong" questions were very confusing for students. In question no 6 of Physics, there were two correct answers of the total four given. And, in question no 12 of the Physics paper I and question no 56 of Mathematics in paper II, all the four choices given were correct due to ambiguity in the question.

"In all there are 11 such questions in paper I and II," said a senior IIT professor, who had analysed the question paper after IIT-JEE board made it public with answer keys.

A Delhi student, who appeared for IIT-JEE 2012 exam, said: "I had spent a lot of time analyzing which was the correct answer as all of them appeared to be correct. In the end, I marked one of the correct answers". For many like him, it meant wastage of lot of time after IIT admitted of the errors.

The incorrect answers also highlight the random change in IIT evaluation policy. In JEE exam of 2011, 12 free marks were awarded for wrong questions but, this year, no free marks were there.

But, a senior IIT professor associated with IIT-JEE examination system said the policy cannot be uniform as it depends on evaluation of errors in question paper every year. "Situation differs every year. Errors take place as questions papers cannot be peer reviewed to maintain secrecy," he explained.

To make the system fair, many parents have been demanding that answer keys to IIT-JEE questions should be announced before evaluation is done so that they can give their feedback.

Some state governments announce answer keys immediately after the examination. The West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination Board announced provisional answer keys to all question papers immediately after the examination in May 1. The UP Technical Education Board also follows a similar practice.

"It is difficult to understand why IITs cannot declare answer keys immediately," said Akshit Khanna, who son appeared for IIT-JEE 2012 exam.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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