Excelsior Correspondent
Srinagar, Nov 24: Aspirants of National Eligibility Test (NET) 2018 are up in arms against National Testing Agency (NTA) for designating their examination centers outside the State.
The aspirants complained that their exam centers have been designated outside the State, despite given preference to the exam centers here and it will be difficult for them to travel outside the State for the exams due to financial and other hurdles.
Mohammad Ikhlaq, an aspirant who hails from North Kashmir’s Kupwara district said that his exam centre has been designated in Hyderabad and he is not in a position to travel there due to financial constraints.
“It is sheer injustice for the aspirants of Kashmir. How can they designate the centre outside the State when we have preferred here. I am not in a position right now to afford the expenses for travelling outside the State for exams. If the exam centre is not changed, I have no option but to skip the exam,” he said.
The aspirants said that there are many candidates whose exam centres have been set up in different parts of the country including Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Rajasthan and Hyderabad.
They said the NET exams are held by the University Grants Commission (UGC) and they always used to set the exam centres here but from this year UGC established NTA as a premier, specialist, autonomous and self-sustained testing organisation to conduct the examinations and centres were set up outside the State.
Another aggrieved aspirant, Umer Nazir said that the exam is scheduled to be in mid-December and air fare at that time remains very high as Srinagar-Jammu road mostly remains closed due to heavy snowfall. “It will be impossible for the candidates who are financially weak to travel outside the state as the air fares at that time do not cost less than Rs 10,000 and most of us cannot afford the amount,” he said
The aspirants appealed to the Governor Satya Pal Malik to take up the matter with the UGC so that their centres are set up in Kashmir.
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