Mumbai: The Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE), jointly conducted by the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (IISc) to award masters' in 74 areas including engineering, architecture and life sciences, will have no participation of pharmacy students from 2010.

This may come as a blow to lakhs of meritorious students who have, for years, taken the GATE examination for admission to the two-year M. Pharma programme in institutes across the country.

Vinay Sonawane, a pharmacy student was informed by the IITs that they would stop conducting GATE for pharmacy students after 2009, after an application was filed by him under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.

Now, students will have to move towards private colleges where, academicians fear, admission standards will be compromised. GATE qualified students are entitled to a monthly scholarship of Rs.5000.

S.C. Saxena, Director of IIT Roorkee confirmed that the decision to discontinue the entrance test had been taken by the national coordinating committee.

"The IITs and IISc have to depend on faculty members from other pharmacy colleges to conduct the test and it is getting more and more difficult to ensure that outside faculty members maintained the same standards as ours," added Gautam Barua, Director IIT Guwahati.

IITs have been the conducting body of the GATE examination but never offered the same course at its campuses.

The decision, however, has angered students who now plan to take the matter up with the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry as "the exam maintained merit and fairness in the admission process''.

Pharmacy students form the second-largest proportion of GATE aspirants after engineering graduates. Last year, about 20,000 students took the GATE for pharmacy.