While Kota has been denied the chance to host the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advanced, the Central Board of Secondary (CBSE) did not allot a single JEE Main examination centre to the coaching capital for 2017. Kota hosted JEE Main in 2015 and 2016, before CBSE removed it from the examination cities this year, without citing any reasons.
After endless demands/requests, Kota was made an examination centre for JEE Main, and now CBSE has given a shocker to the city after the withdrawal from JEE Main 2017 examination hosting cities in Rajasthan. In the official Information Brochure released by CBSE for JEE Mains 2017 on November 1, 2016, only five cities in Rajasthan; namely Jaipur, Jodhpur, Ajmer, Bikaner and Udaipur will host JEE Main 2017 offline and online exams. Though CBSE has not cited any reason for barring Kota from hosting the JEE Main 2017, the presence of coaching institutes may be the reason for it.
CBSE’s decision did not go well with the coaching institutes, as well the student community in Kota. Around 50,000 aspirants take coaching for JEE Main in Kota. Reacting on dropping Kota as JEE Mains Examination centre, Director of Allen Career Institute, Kota, Brajesh Maheshwari stated, “Large number of JEE aspirants study in Kota and when examination dates approaches, aspirants do not want to lose precious time in travelling down to the examination centres in other cities.” He continued, “Exclusion of Kota as JEE Mains 2017 examination centre is unfortunate”. An aspirant while registering for JEE Main 2017 was shocked to see that Kota is no longer an examination centre for the exam. “Appearing for JEE Main in Kota would have prevented coaching aspirants from the additional trouble of undertaking journey to other cities in examination time”, he said.
Member of Parliament from Kota, Om Birla, has written to the Union Human Resource Development Minister, Prakash Javdekar objecting on CBSE’s decision to debar Kota from the examination centers list and has demanded to revive examination centres in Kota. “Around 20,000 aspirants take JEE Main in Kota for which 22 to 28 examination centres have been made in Kota from last several years”, he claimed. Dropping Kota from the list will force aspirants to rush to other cities during examination which creates inconvenience to the student community.
JEE Advanced 2017 exam will however be held in 10 cities of Rajasthan except Kota.