JEE vs GujCET battle back in spotlight

Ahmedabad: Gujarat’s engineering admission system has gone full circle over the past two decades. The state was among the first in the country to embrace the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) as a common route for technical admissions, projecting it as a way to standardise merit and prepare students for national-level competition. But years later, mounting concerns over pressure on local students forced the govt to retreat and restore GujCET as the main gateway for engineering and pharmacy seats.The debate has now resurfaced once again.Gujarat first aligned engineering and pharmacy admissions with JEE in 2004–05. In 2013, the state again pushed JEE Main as the central route, arguing that students needed national exposure. However, the move faced strong resistance from parents and students targeting colleges within Gujarat.Officials acknowledged that many local aspirants struggled because JEE’s syllabus and exam pattern differed significantly from the state board. Unlike GujCET, which aligns closely with the Class 12 syllabus, JEE Main tests concepts from both Classes 11 and 12 and is designed for national-level competition. Officials argued that Gujarat students were being placed at a disadvantage compared to aspirants from CBSE and national coaching systems.Following repeated representations, the state govt formally restored GujCET in 2017 as the primary gateway for state engineering and pharmacy seats. Since then, it has remained the dominant entrance exam. While a few private universities still accept JEE scores, most state colleges rely entirely on GujCET rankings.Annually, nearly 1.4 lakh students take GujCET. Around 55,000 PCM (physics-chemistry-maths) students also appear for JEE Main, while the rest are PCB students eyeing pharmacy and allied courses.In 2024, the issue returned to the policy table following discussions over scrapping GujCET once again to shift fully back to JEE Main. The proposal has revived the long-standing debate over whether Gujarat should prioritise national benchmarking or continue with a state-level exam aligned with local students and board syllabi.