NTA requests universities for space to set up exam centres

NEW DELHI: The National Testing Agency (NTA) has written a letter to vice-chancellors of all universities requesting space to set up exam centres for conducting online, computer-based tests (CBT). NTA envisions to set up exam centres in over 600 districts which can house about 2,00,000 candidates per shift with each exam centre having a minimum of 250 seats.

NTA requested the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to set up a closed space area of at least 6500 square feet on the campus premises to be used for new IT infrastructure by the NTA to conduct the exams by NTA. The agency also informed that the exam centres will be constructed with a revenue-sharing model where the institutions will not be required to pay anything.

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The HEIs were further informed by the NTA that the infrastructures developed for NTA exam centres can also be used to offer targeted training in low-expertise tasks for supporting the Al value chain such as data annotation, image classification, speech transcription and many others, and to conduct ICT based vocational education courses or programmes. "This initiative will assist NTA in achieving the goal of conducting examination across India in a standardized environment and without any scope of malpractice," NTA said in the letter.

According to NTA, this initiative will create future-ready IT-enabled standardized online examination centres. NTA requested HEIs to convey their acceptance to create infrastructure for the centres and submit it to the NTA director by July 10.

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