DMK promises to abolish NEET, bring back old pricing for petrol & cylinders

A separate budget for agriculture, loan waiver for students, free electricity are other poll promises for Lok Sabha 2019 elections

Lok Sabha Elections 2019: The M K Stalin-led Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) has promised to abolish the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), formerly the All India Pre-Medical Test, as part of its poll promise. The party, which has joined hands with the Congress for the upcoming LokSabha election has also promised to bring back the old pricing models for petrol & gas cylinders.

DMK President Stalin released the party’s election manifesto for the Lok Sabha polls scheduled for April 18 in the state. The other promises of the party include metro rail projects for Madurai, Trichy, Coimbatore and Salem, and permanent Indian citizenship for Sri Lankan refugees currently living in camps in Tamil Nadu.

The party also promised to release seven prisoners jailed in the Rajiv Gandhi assassin case, loan waivers for students, a separate budget for farmers at the Lok Sabha, free electricity for weavers, museum at Keezhadi, 0.5 per cent GDP for natural disasters, MNREGA up to 150 days….

Online NEET-UG unlikely in 2019; HRD Ministry to maintain status quo

The Health Ministry sent a letter to the MHRD within three days saying the announcement was made “without formal consultation” with them

Education news : The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test or NEET-UG, a qualifying test for admission in medical institutions, may not be conducted twice in 2019 as announced by HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar in July, according to reports.

Days after the announcement of newly formed National Testing Agency (NTA) who would conduct the national- level examinations — NET, NEET, JEE (Mains) — that were organised by the CBSE, Health Ministry wrote a letter to HRD Ministry, asking them to continue with the offline examination or pen-paper mode in 2019 as well, a Times of India report said.

According to Javadekar in his July announcement, the tests would be computer-based. The exams would be held over a span of four-five days and students would have the option of choosing the dates, he said. The NEET-UG was scheduled for February 2019 with a repeat on May 2019.

The Health Ministry, according to Indian Express, sent a letter to the HRD Ministry within three days saying the announcement was made “without formal consultation” with them. The letter stated the computer-based test would put students from rural and economically poor families at a disadvantage.

Article Source : BS

Each JEE, NEET examinee may get a unique question paper from next year

Starting from 2019, the National Testing Agency mandates competitive exams to be computerised

Soon after the human resource development ministry announced the handing over of competitive exams like JEE, NEET to the National Testing Agency (NTA), a new set of rules have been prepared and are ready to roll from next year. The NTA now mandates competitive exams to be all computerised, meaning which, the examinations will rely heavily on technological tools like Artificial Intelligence, Psychometric analysis and Computer-based adaptive testing.

With this, each candidate will now get a unique set of questions, with the software picking questions randomly for candidates.

In a statement, Vineet Joshi, director general of NTA, said: “The test will be 100 per cent safe… The highest level of encryption will be used so that no one can hack into the system,” the Times of India reported.

The changes to the examination pattern include distracting candidates with multiple choice questions to fox them. “And with millions of questions (items) to be prepared instead of a couple of question papers for a particular test, you will be at the mercy of the software’s algorithm, which will pick up items at random for your test at a particular date, based on the set of difficulty-level,” an official was quoted as saying by the Times of India.

This move will help the NTA do things faster — from setting the questions to preparing the correct answers.

NTA is also undertaking psychometric analysis of previous years’ test. This is done to:

1) Test how well each question has fared so as to determine its level of difficulty.

2) To check if the distraction system (multiple choice for a question) applied to the candidates functioned well. This is primarily done so that the ones who know the subject are able to answer correctly.

3)To check how well the question paper has functioned and to see if these tests were reliable.(ARTICLE SOURCE : BS)

OnePlus 6 to roll out new update, camera app will flaunt ‘Google Lens’

Launched in May, “OnePlus 6” retains a 16MP front camera and a dual 16MP + 20MP primary camera set-up

One Plus 6 : China-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus on Tuesday said it has started rolling out the next software update that comes with support for “Google Lens” functionality on OnePlus 6’s native camera app.

The update in its exclusive Android based operating system (OS ) OxygenOS 5.1.9 also introduces significant camera improvements, the company said in a statement.

Launched during its I/O conference last year, “Google Lens” is an image recognition mobile app to bring up relevant information using visual analysis.

OnePlus 5 and 5T users could also expect to get the “Google lens” via an over-the-air (OTA) update soon, the company informed.

“With the integration of ‘Google Lens’, users can use the camera to scan QR codes and use the image recognition tool to get more information about things like books, buildings, and works of art, by simply tapping on it,” the statement added.

Launched in May, “OnePlus 6” retains a 16MP front camera and a dual 16MP + 20MP primary camera set-up.(ARTICLE SOURCE : BS)