As a chairman you managed to declare the JEE results in 19 days. Why was there a delay in delivering the rank cards?
I assumed office of the chairman only six months ago. I realised that we did not have adequate infrastructure, which caused the delay in publishing results. The server couldn’t take the load of rank cards of so many students with their photographs and signatures.

A racket of dummy candidates was exposed last year. What preventive measures did the board take this year?
We tried to prevent impostor candidates from appearing in the examination. We had sent a CD containing details such as the photograph, signature and date of birth of the candidates to all the 193 examination centres. We also issued student cards, which carried the thumb impression of the candidates .

Did it help in checking the impostor candidates?
A fake candidate was detained at an examination centre at Durgapur when his details did not match with the record contained in the CD. It must have sent a warning signal to all such candidates, as there was no imposter candidate was reported after this incident.

This year’s question papers were leaked just a day before the examination. What steps did you take to check such incidents?
The question papers were not leaked by the board, but from a government printing press. After this, we took precautions, ensured secrecy and conducted the examination smoothly.

Despite an increase in the engineering colleges and corresponding seats, why did the number of examinees go down this year?
The number of candidates went down, as the state government had scrapped all the outstation examination centres this year. Yet, of 76, 000 students enrolled for the examination this year, nearly 67,000 had appeared. The percentage of enrolled candidates, who wrote the examination this year, was higher than last year’s.

The new pattern of JEE comprises both subjective and objective questions. Any specific reason for this change?
Some guesswork is always involved with objective questions. With subjective ones, this element is minimised.

How important is the JEE in the present educational scenario of the state?
It’s a turning point in the career of a student. With the number of engineering colleges going up, migration of students to the Southern states has stopped. Earlier, the undergraduate students of West Bengal would move to South India.

Nearly 88,000 people from the state are employed with the IT industry. Of them, 24,000 work with software sector and the rest in the BPO industry. With steel industries, manufacturing units and chemical hubs coming up, we should emphasise on core engineering sectors for balanced growth.

Private engineering colleges have grown manifold in the last decade, but the number of government engineering colleges has remained static.
There is a huge demand for technical education. It is neither possible nor feasible for the government to meet the needs of these students; hence private sector has stepped in. The sector is growing and a healthy competition between the government and the private colleges will benefit the students. The government needs to support the basic courses of science and humanities, and revise the syllabii of these courses to make them job-oriented. The government should also focus more on neglected areas such as agriculture.