Jammu, January 31: Jammu seems to be destined to get discriminated, be it the supremacy of Kashmiris in political dispensation or the administrative setup. But many of us forget that our students also face a different kind of discrimination that has been ignored by the leaders of Jammu till date for reasons better known to them even as we lose a major share in various state level entrance examinations.
The Jammu and Kashmir Combined Entrance Test (JKCET) is one fine example to show how Jammu stunts lose due to the fact that they get less time to prepare for the entrance examinations than their counterparts in winter zone.
Since entire Kashmir falls under winter zone they finish with their annual exams by December and get more than six months to prepare for appearing in entrance examinations like JKCET etc. while on the other hand the students falling in summer zone in Jammu finish their annual exams by April and hardly get two months to prepare resulting in drastic fall in admissions in professional colleges of the state.
The leaders of this region have till now been sleeping over the issue thus letting our students suffer and lose out to winter zone while they harp on the issue of discrimination to gain political mileage.
Since the examination pattern is unlikely to change for now as it was not allowed last year too perhaps for the same reasons, the practical solution to this kind of discrimination with summer zone students is to hold the exams separately for each region and also reserve the seats according to regional requirements.
While the data clearly shows that summer zone students pay a heavy price in terms of their share in the seats of professional colleges of the state the demand has started growing in this region for a separate board and separate dates for the students of the Jammu region.
It is but natural that the students who get more than six months to get professional coaching and time to prepare would fare well in the exams while those who get just two months to toil do not make it to the list for obvious reasons.
The discrimination that has been going on with the students of summer zone for the past so many years needs to be curbed and an alternative mechanism implemented to do justice with the students of Jammu.
The debate has just started and soon we will come out with exact statistics and data to show how Jammu students face discrimination of a different kind which amounts to playing with their career. Watch out for these columns.