Amaravati, Jul 13 (PTI) The Andhra Pradesh government on Monday decided to put off all Common Entrance Tests (CET) for admission into various professional and higher education courses in view of the prevailing Covid-19 pandemic situation,

"After a review of the situation, Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy directed that the CETs be postponed and, accordingly, we have decided to hold them in the third week of September.

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Fresh dates for these entrance examinations will be announced later," Education Minister A Suresh told reporters.

He pointed out that similar entrance examinations at the national level too were deferred because of the coronavirus pandemic.

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The AP government, through the State Council of Higher Education, conducts EAMCET, ICET, PGCET, LawCET, EdCET and other entrance examinations for admission into courses like engineering, medicine, agriculture, business administration, law and also various post-graduate degrees.

These CETs are normally conducted in the month of May, but because of COVID-19 the schedule got disturbed this year.

Meanwhile, SRM University, AP also announced on Monday that its Joint Engineering Entrance Exam for admission into B. Tech programmes has been cancelled.

"In the light of challenges posed by COVID-19, and taking into account the safety concerns of students and parents, SRM Institute of Science and Technology has cancelled the SRM Joint Engineering Entrance Exam for B.Tech admissions 2020, that was planned in 127 Indian cities and five overseas centres in Dubai, Doha, Muscat, Bahrain and Kuwait.

The B.Tech admissions will now be based on plus-two ntermediate marks in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics/Biology," the University said in a release here.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)