A group of candidates could not write the online University Grants Commission’s National Eligibility Test (NET), an examination to determine the eligibility to teach in colleges and universities, at the National Institute of Technology-Calicut (NITC) due to technical glitches, on Saturday.
Server issues are reported to have caused the impasse. The NITC said in a release later that neither the institution nor its infrastructure and officials were responsible for the difficulties faced by the candidates.
According to one of the candidates, registration for the morning session of the exam was scheduled to be held between 7.20 a.m. and 8.20 a.m. The three-hour exam was supposed to start at 9 a.m. However, the registration got delayed due to a slowing down of the server and could be completed only by around 10.30 a.m. As soon as the exam started by around 11 a.m., the candidates were not able to load the page and navigate between the questions. But since they had logged in, the clock was ticking even though they could not attend any questions. There were over 70 candidates writing the exam in subjects such as Sanskrit, Population Studies, and Political Science.
NITC officials said the exam was conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA), New Delhi, which had shortlisted Ediquity as the technical coordinator for conducting the exams at various centres. Two technical persons of Ediquity and an observer on behalf of the NTA was present at the NITC on Saturday. The server for conducting the exams was brought by Ediquity. NITC officials claimed that the slowness in page loading experienced by the candidates was also due to the server issue hosted by Ediquity team. Though the Bengaluru support team of the firm tried to fix the problem and asked students to restart the application again, the same issue was popping up. The Ediquity team then restarted the server, and all the terminals were disconnected.
However, it was showing that the server was not reachable. By 11.30 a.m., some agitated candidates attempted to come out of the hall despite the repeated assurance that they would be given extra time as compensation for the time lost. They boycotted the exam.
The NIT-C release said that the exam was restarted by 12 p.m. after talks with the NTA authorities with 44 candidates and they were given extra time they lost due to technical errors. The exam was completed by 3.15pm. The NTA rejected the demand for a retest on another day by the boycotted candidates. The 44 students wrote the exam completely, without any further issues, the release pointed out.
