GATE 2022: The Supreme Court on Thursday, February 3 dismissed the pleas seeking postponement of the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE 2022) scheduled to be held on February 5, 6, 12 and 13. The bench of Justices DY Chandrachud, Surya Kant and Vikram Nath said that it is a matter of academic policy as to when the examination should be held and the court cannot enter this arena. It noted that nine lakh students are to appear in the examination and around 20,000 students have signed an online petition for postponing the examination.
“The students have prepared for it and the court cannot play with the career of the students by postponing the examination”, the bench observed. On Wednesday, the top court had agreed to list the plea seeking postponement of GATE. The plea for postponement of the examination said that nine lakh students are appearing in the test at 200 centres and the authorities have not issued any Covid-appropriate guidelines for conducting the exam.
Thousands of students who will appear in the GATE have demanded for the postponement of exam considering the Covid-19 pandemic situations. The candidates have also joined a petition demanding the exam to be deferred.
The GATE admit card has already been released, and the candidates can use their admit cards as curfew-passes or movement passes to move from their homes to the GATE exam centres. The IIT Kharagpur in an official statement mentioned, “The Organising Institute of GATE Examination 2022, IIT Kharagpur under Ministry of Education, Government of India, issues a letter to ensure smooth movement of the candidates carrying valid admit cards on the day of examination, i.e. 5th, 6th, 12th and 13th February, 2022 for GATE Examination 2022."
GATE is a recruitment-cum-admission test that primarily tests the comprehensive understanding of various undergraduate subjects in engineering and science for admission to the masters programme and recruitment by some public sector companies. The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur is the organising body for GATE 2022.
GATE 2022 will be held in two slots on the exam days. The first slot is from 9 am to 12 noon and the next one is between 2:30 pm and 5:30 pm.
- With PTI Inputs
