Centre Announces Exemption of Northeastern States, Uttarakhand from CUET 2022

New Delhi: The Union government has announced the exemption of eight Central Universities in the Northeastern states and one in Uttarakhand from conducting the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) 2022 for admissions to undergraduate courses.

The Centre has sent out a letter to the registrars of the central universities who are exempted from holding the CUET 2022, attributing the decision due to “operational difficulties” in the states.

The universities from the Northeastern states had approached the union government in this regard, states the letter, sent out on May 19.

CUET 2022: Reasons for Exemption

The Ministry of Education said that keeping in mind the operational difficulties in conducting the CUET 2022 exam, i.e. the issue of geographical conditions, hilly terrain, far-flung location, limited digital connectivity, infrastructure etc, the Centre has decided to exempt the Central Universities of North Eastern Region…as well as HNB Garhwal University (HNBGU), Uttarakhand from conducting CUET 2022 exam.

These aforementioned universities and it's affiliated colleges can grant admissions to the UG courses according to the past practice instead of CUET for the academic year 2022-23 only, the ministry said.

However, these Northeastern universities will likely have to conduct the CUET exam from the next academic session onwards.

CUET 2022: List of Exempted Universities

Some of the Northeastern universities that are exempted from conducting CUET 2022 are Sikkim University, Rajiv Gandhi University (RGU) in Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur University (MU), Assam University, Nagaland University, Tripura University, Mizoram University (MZU) and North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU) in Meghalaya.

Earlier this week, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan had granted exemption to the central university in Meghalaya, the North Eastern Hill University (NEHU), owing to the similar issues of geographical challenges and connectivity. The decision of exemption was announced after a meeting with the Chief Minister of Meghalaya, Conrad K Sangma, met Pradhan with this request on April 25.

The NTA will conduct the CUET 2022 exam for admissions into UG courses on July 11. It is mandatory for all central universities to determine the CUET scores for admissions into UG courses for the academic year 2022-23. Several private and state universities have also signed up for the same.

On May 19, UGC Chairman M Jagadesh Kumar announced the opening of the application window for CUET for post graduation (PG) courses. The CUET-PG 2022 is likely to be held in the third week of July 2022.

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