Patna:
Super-30 founder and mathematician Anand Kumar has claimed that mistakes have been detected in the IIT-JEE 2012 question papers.
Anand, whose efforts to help underprivileged students get through the tough competitive examination have been recognised world-wide, said the problem had been detected soon after the examination, but it was confirmed after the JEE uploaded the answers to three questions yesterday.
Anand said it was strange that instead of accepting the mistake, the authorities had resorted to 'average marking', just like they had done when errors were detected in question papers last year.
"This move will have an adverse impact on meritorious students," he said.
In respect to one question each in Chemistry (Q No. 23) and Mathematics (Q No. 60) of Paper 2, the JEE authorities issued a statement saying all students would get zero mark for it. "This means that the problems are wrong and even those students who still made an attempt to solve them would get zero mark. Similarly, in question number 6 of Physics, there should be one right choice, but two choices have been given," he explained.
"This trend of setting wrong questions has been going on for the last three years due to callousness on the part of the question-setters," he said.
Last year, he pointed out, questions worth 18 marks had been detected wrong and later average marks were given.
Anand said that two years ago it came to light that Hindi-medium students had been discriminated against and were deliberately given low scores.
"This is injustice to meritorious students. Such things raise a question mark over the IIT's credibility and shakes students' confidence," Anand rued. It is high time, he said, the authorities worked out a foolproof mechanism to prevent such mistakes in the future. "The teachers should test the answers by solving them before sending them for print," he said.
Anand had a few days ago submitted a detailed proposal to Human Resource Development minister Kapil Sibal regarding IIT-JEE reforms.