NEW DELHI: The

(NTA) will conduct a

for 15 of the central universities of the country from the 2020-21 academic session. These will include universities of Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Jammu, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka among others. The human resource development ministry is likely to give a nod to the proposal on Thursday. NTA is in talks with other central universities as well to join the common test.

This is the first time NTA has been entrusted with the task of conducting the

(CUCET) which till last May was conducted by the University of Rajasthan. So far 10 central universities which used to enrol students based on the CUCET score.

“There is addition to the list of the universities this year for the academic session 2020-21 making it 15 so far. And more are likely to join as NTA is in touch with other new universities like the Central University of Manipur,” said a source in the MHRD.

The common entrance test for the 15 central universities for 2020-21 academic session will be conducted in May, 2020. The test would be conducted for around 50 undergraduate courses, over 170 postgraduate and over 100 MPhil and PhD programmes.

NTA conducted a computer-based entrance test for Delhi University and

this year for a limited number of courses.

NTA in 2019 has already conducted a computer based entrance test for Delhi University for a limited number of courses in 2019 and for Jawaharlal Nehru University.

“NTA has the capacity and capability as the final aim is to make it a premium testing agency. It has already delivered glitchfree, transparent and secure testing for a number of critical entrance exams such JEE (Main), NEET,

,

and JNU entrance tests,” said a senior HRD official.

The decision to hand over the CUCET to NTA is likely be taken on Thursday by the ministry. The ministry is also planning to rope in more centrally funded institutions to CUCET as well as reach out to state universities in future to use these test scores for admissions.