A few days after the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) announced that it will not be adopting the Common University Entrance Test (CUET UG 2023), the University Grants Commission (UGC) has written a reminder mail to AMU and Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) reiterating that all central universities have to mandatory adopt the entrance test for admission.

“UGC has asked all the Central Universities to use CUET scores for admissions to all the courses. However, this has been observed that Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) has opted to participate in CUET-2023 for a limited number of programmes/courses, as was done last year. Please note that all the Central Universities, including AMU, are required to participate for all UG programmes in CUET 2023 to provide equal opportunities to aspiring candidates, which is in the student’s best interests,” the letter stated.

A similar request was made to the universities on February 4 and 9. The letter has also stated that CUET provides a common platform and equal opportunities to candidates across the country, especially those from Northeast, rural, and other remote areas, and helps to establish better connections with the universities. “A single examination enables the candidates to cover a broad outreach and be part of the admission process to various Central and participating Universities,” the letter states.

These letters were sent to AMU and JMI on Friday (February 17), and a revert is still expected, a top official told

The AMU representative had earlier claimed that they have not received any specific instruction from the Commission and would therefore continue with the pattern adopted by the university last year. However, the university has not been available for a comment till the time of publication.

Jamia, like last year, has been reluctant in adopting CUET UG. The officials believe that the entrance test leads to severe delay in the admission process. An internal meeting of Jamia officials had concluded that the institute “should allot few courses of UG and PG to CUET as per last year’s practice and conduct its own entrance tests for all the remaining courses to ensure timely admissions etc.”