Several students, who had appeared for the offline Joint Entrance Examination (JEE Main), were stumped as three questions in the Physics and Math sections allegedly had no correct answer options.
However, the matter came into light only when the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) released the answer key to the papers and allowed students to challenge the answers by paying Rs1,000 per question. The board is now under fire for not rectifying the mistakes in the answer key and in turn taking money from students for the rectification of the same.
According to parents of a student who appeared for the exam, there were blatant mistakes made in the answers options and the answer key released by the board supported the mistake. “There was one question where the correct answer was supposed to be a negative value, but all the options given had positive values and there was no ‘none of the above’ option as well. Another question had even messed up the units of measurements, thus confusing children even more. The answer key has shown the incorrect answer as correct,” he said.
Nearly 14 lakh people took the JEE (Main) this year of which around three lakh students appeared for it online. Recently, one Physics question was dropped from the online exam on the basis of being incorrect. However, the same has not been done for the offline exam. In the answer key released on Monday (April 28) for 24 hours, the answers displayed for the respective questions were incorrect. Thus, almost 1,100 students challenged these questioned on Tuesday.
Parents have also alleged that the CBSE is not interested in rectifying the mistake. One parent whose child studies in East Delhi said, “When we approached the board they said that students should be able to understand the mistake that has been made and go on and solve the problem the best way they can. Now when a student is already tensed about the exam, he or she will not sit and see that the answer options are only incorrect.”
However, the board said that the matter is being examined and soon a decision will be taken positively. “No decision has been taken so far. We are still in the process of confirming if the three questions pointed out by the parents and students are actually incorrect or not. However, if they are, there will definitely be something done about it and the changes will be applied to all the students irrespective of if they challenged the question or not,” Vineet Joshi told The Pioneer. Meanwhile the Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights (DCPCR) has sent a notice to CBSE for taking action against this discrepancy.