New Delhi: The National Testing Agency’s (NTA) dress code for the JEE Main 2021 disallows candidates from wearing “shoes or footwear with thick soles and garments with large buttons”. There’s a reason for doing so.
The dress code is meant to prevent cheating, or the use of “unfair means”, in the highly competitive entrance exams for undergraduate Engineering programmes, reported NDTV.
“Candidates will be offered a fresh three-ply mask before entry. In order to stop chances of any UFM (unfair means) being used in the examination, the candidate is expected to wear the freshly provided mask at the centre. The candidate will be requested to remove the mask worn by him/her from home and use only the mask provided at the centre, in the test room,” The NTA JEE Main 2021 said in its bulletin.
For the agency, the broader definition of the use of “unfair means” is “an activity that allows a candidate to gain an unfair advantage over other candidates.”
NTA has defined 13 types of actions under this, which would be considered as the use of “unfair means” in JEE Main 2021. These include obvious ones like bringing in items that can help in cheating, threatening officials and getting a proxy to write the exam — better known as “impersonation”— as well as less obvious ones like “writing questions or answers on any material other than the answer sheet given by the Centre Superintendent for writing answers”.
Also, to prevent candidates from cheating, “live CCTV surveillance has been planned in all examination centres”, NTA said via a statement. “The NTA is also making arrangements for live viewing at any remote location and recording CCTVs systems of all examination centres from the Control Room located in the NTA premises of New Delhi,” the statement further said. “Jammers have been installed in all the centres,” it added.
More than 6.6 lakh candidates registered for the February session of the JEE Main 2021.