Hindi questions appear in UGC-NET Kannada paper; blunder leaves candidates fuming

Team Udayavani, Dec 27, 2021, 9:12 AM IST

Bengaluru: In a major blunder, the Hindi questions appeared on the Kannada paper for University Grants Commission (UGC) National Eligibility Test (NET) held on December 26, leading to confusion and outrage among the candidates.

While many questioned the motives behind printing questions in Hindi, some aspirants saw it as a clear example of Hindi imposition. “UGC comes under the purview of the central government. This is a subverted effort at Hindi imposition, they said adding that they were shocked to see that the question paper has been printed in Hindi for the Kannada exam.

What was the problem?

The National Testing Agency (NTA) on Sunday held UGC-NET examinations for determining the eligibility for Assistant Professorship, Junior Research Fellowship. The computer-based Kannada subject paper was held on Sunday from 9 AM to 12 PM. The paper-1 had questions and paper-2 had 100 questions. The candidates were baffled to see only 10 questions in the paper-2 were printed in Kannada and the rest 90 were in Hindi.

Technical problem:

After the error was noticed, the candidates were asked to stay back as the NTA promised to rectify the “technical glitch.” Even after waiting till 2 PM, the problems persisted. They were later asked to leave the exam hall disappointed and frustrated.

Exam postponed :

Meanwhile, NTA announced that the exam will be rescheduled for a later date. In a notification issued on the official website it said, “Due to technical issues at some centres of UGC-NET December 2020 and June 2021 examination in Subject “Kannada” held on December 26 (Shift-1) in CBT mode, the scheduled examination could not be conducted. NTA has decided to reschedule the Examination of these impacted candidates. The revised date for the rescheduled examination will be uploaded shortly along with the revised admit card for these candidates.”