Day 2 of CUET: More students miss test due to late centre switch

NEW DELHI: For Bawana resident Chhaya Sharma and Bhajanpura resident Srishti Yadav, Saturday began as early as 6am. They were sitting for the Common University Entrance Test (CUET-UG). Both traversed the city to reach their exam centre in Dwarka only to be told that it had been shifted to Delhi University’s North Campus. They couldn’t make it to DU in time and missed their CUET slot on the second day of the university entrance exams.
Both said as they were busy preparing for their papers, they missed checking their email on Friday evening, which informed them about a last-minute change in their exam centre. Sharma said, “In my first slot, I was to sit for the general test, accounts, English and business studies. When I reached Dwarka, I found out about the centre change. Even if I had checked my email in the morning, it would have been impossible to get my admit card printed so early in the morning.”
Yadav, in turn, said, “I was busy preparing and it is not like I check my phone every other minute. I did not receive any call from the National Testing Agency notifying me about the centre change. What will I do now? How can such important exams be organised in a manner like this?”
Several parents said that after the first day’s fiasco about exam centres, they were anxious throughout the night and kept checking email to see whether further changes had happened. But on the second day of CUET, the last-minute changes left many parents and students complaining about the hassles.
Pawan Kumar Gupta, a parent, said, “Two days before the exam, we downloaded the admit card only to get an email about a centre change a day before the test. The process of downloading and printing the admit card had to be repeated. We were not even told the reason why the exam centre had been changed at the last moment.”
Suman Bhandari of Gole Market, another parent, spent a fitful night. “My daughter had the first set of exams on Friday and the second on Saturday. After all the confusion on the first day, I remained tense and worried throughout the night wondering what would happen if there is another centre change. Even in the morning, we were paranoid and praying that everything would go well.”
While students who appeared for the examination largely said that the papers went well, some were troubled by servers crashing for brief periods. Vishakha Agarwal said, “There were minor issues with the server. When we sat for the tests, it took a long time to download the questions and this happened even though the timer began ticking away. So at the end of each 45-minute slot, we had fallen short by around five minutes each time. This may not seem much, but it made us anxious.”