Around 76,500 students will appear for the exam this year, said Siddharth Dutta, chairman of West Bengal Board of Joint Entrance Examination. Nearly 1,10,000 had appeared for the exams last year.

Dutta claimed that the number of the examination centres has also dropped to 193. The state government decision to abolish most centres outside the state could also be held responsible for the reduced number of students attempting the exam.

The students will be competing for nearly 16,500 seats in government and private engineering colleges and 1105 seats in the medical and dental colleges in the state. The government has allowed only three external centers in Tripura. Meanwhile, the Joint Entrance Examination (to be held on April 20) will have a different pattern, consisting 80 per cent objective (multiple choice questions) and 20 per cent short answer type questions.

Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) authorities said that subjective answers are to be written in two or three lines. The subjective exam is aimed at providing a handwriting sample of the students to authorities. The students will be provided ten minutes before the start of the exam for filling necessary identification details. The candidates will also be allowed to take multiple choice question papers outside, after the completion of the exam.

All the three examinations: Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology have been scheduled in three different slots on April 20. The Physics and Chemistry papers will be one paper, according 50 marks for each subject.

Meanwhile, authorities are also taking steps to ensure a fair conduct of the exams. The police had busted a network of imposter candidates last year.

The centre in-charge will have an index card containing necessary details of all students including the photograph, thumb impression and signature of all candidates.

IIT, US company join hands on cancer research
Kolkata: Texas Instruments, a semi-conductor major, and the School of Medical Science and Technology, IIT Kharagpur have joined hands to carry out research on technologies responsible for early detection of breast and oral cancer.

Ajay Kumar Roy, director of the School of Medical Science and Technology said that it was the American company's first tie-up with any Indian educational institute.

"For four years, they will pool in necessary research support at the institute," claimed the director. The research will also take up the project for development of Biomems, a sensor to monitor blood flow.