APSCHE ready to conduct EAPCET-2021; first exam on August 19

The Andhra Pradesh State Council of Higher Education (APSCHE) has assigned the task of conducting the AP EAPCET-2021 examination to Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University Kakinada (JNTUK). The notification for AP EAPCET 2021 was released on 25 June and the registration of applications commenced from 26 June 2021 through online mode. The examination for the Engineering stream will be conducted on August 19, 20, 23, 24 and 25 and for the Agriculture and Pharmacy streams, the examination will be conducted on September 3, 6 and 7. 

It has been decided that the AP EAPCET -2021 will be conducted through a computer-based test (CBT). Furthermore, the EAPCET-2021 marks will be given 100 percent weightage due to the intermediate examinations being cancelled in the state. In view of the infrastructural requirements and the Covid-19 pandemic situation, the test has been planned in 16 sessions (10 for Engineering, 6 for Agriculture & Pharmacy).

In a press release, Andhra Pradesh Minister for Education Adimulapu Suresh informed that EAPCET-2021 will be conducted in a total of 14 test zones (120 test centres) in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states. “Those students who are Covid-19 positive will be prevented from taking the test to safeguard the other students from getting infected and the State Government has taken the decision to conduct a special examination for the Covid-19 affected students. The students testing positive will be accommodated in separate examination sessions for both the Engineering and Agriculture Streams, after thorough scrutinisation of their health certificates,” said the Education Minister. 

The examination question paper will consist of 160 multiple choice based questions in bilingual languages (English/Telugu). The authorities have assured that utmost care will be taken to prevent malpractice during the exam. Awareness about online tests will be imparted through trial tests placed on the APSCHE website, apprising the candidates about the Computer Based Test. Further details are present at the AP-EAPCET website for reference.

For the AP EAPCET-2021, around 1000 invigilators, 200 observers, special observers and 120 Chief Superintendents per session have been drafted. In addition to this, officials from District Administration, District Collectors, Superintendents of Police, APEPDCL, APSRTC, DMHOs and Educational Institutions were instructed to make necessary arrangements in order to ensure smooth conduct of the examination.   

For the engineering stream exam, the preliminary key will be released on 25 August and for the Agriculture stream exam, the preliminary key will be released on 7 September. An expert committee called “Key Objections Verification Committee” has been constituted for each subject to verify the objections raised by the students on the key.

Furthermore, it has been decided to adopt a normalisation process to eliminate any variations in difficulty levels of various examination sessions and ensure that no student gets an advantage /disadvantage due to multiple sessions. The normalisation process will bring all the candidates across all sessions on a comparative scale. Due to this process, the marks in the easy session may be reduced marginally and marks in the difficult session may be increased marginally. The normalised marks will justify the candidate’s performance in the examination.

A total of 2,59,564 candidates have registered for AP-EAPCET 2021, with 1,75,796 candidates registering for the Engineering exam, 83,051 for the Agriculture exam and 717 opting to take both the Engineering and Agriculture examinations. 

There are 1,26,156 female candidates (Engineering: 70,072; Agriculture: 55,686; Both exams: 398) and 1,33,408 male candidates (Engineering: 1,05,724; Agriculture: 27,365; Both exams: 319) sitting for EAPCET this year. A total of 1,59,278 candidates are from the Andhra University (AU) region, 86,774 from Sri Venkateswara University (SVU) region, 10,669 from Osmania University (OU) region and 2,843 non-locals. A total of 23 candidates have applied for a scribe and 70 candidates have opted to write the exam in Urdu medium.