Kerala Kaumudi Impact: Govt rescinds decision, hands over vital contract to C-DIT

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A decision was made to not hand over the conduct of the Kerala Engineering entrance examination (which is about to become online this year) to private companies. Private IT companies have been excluded while the contract was given to C-DIT to conduct the examination.

The Higher Education Department has issued an order permitting the Entrance Commissioner to conduct the online examination by upgrading the software of C-DIT, which conducts the K-MAT examination for MBA admission.

The sudden decision comes after Kerala Kaumudi’s December 3 report, which mentioned the behind-the-door plans to give the contract to private companies. The move was to hand over the administration of the entrance examination including registration to a private company. The government raised apprehension about information leakage if such a move was approved. A private company was then approached to set up the network, server and software system for conducting the test. Three companies including Tata Consultancy Service (TCS), which provides passport services to the central government expressed interest.

However, the government was caught in a fix and was not able to proceed with the deal after being at odds with the mammoth service charge demanded by the private companies. Kerala Kaumudi' then shed light on the significance of C-Dit, a government organization which currently provides IT service for 5 entrance exams, and conducts online exams at a one-fourth cheaper rate than private companies. It was thus deemed that C-Dit's software is best suited for conducting engineering entrance.

C-DIT later wrote to the government to award the contract to them without following the tender process. With this, the government issued an order that the software of C-DIT is sufficient to conduct the entrance examination flawlessly and efficiently. The entrance exam with around one and a half lakh applicants is currently being conducted as a written exam in the OMR format. The entrance exam which is conducted in two papers i.e. Physics-Chemistry and Mathematics will be a single paper of three hours’ duration when it becomes online. The exam will be held in various stages for 5 days.

• Engineering colleges will be the exam centres. A locker server will be set up in the colleges and a second server to be used in case of emergency.

• The question paper on two laptops of the Entrance Commissioner will be accessed on the special software and on the student's computer using the password.