Iit-kanpur rank row: Admissions to resume after Madras HC lifts stay

MUMBAI: The admissions to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITS), which were stalled after complaints about the rank list, will start again after the Madras high court on Tuesday lifted its week-long stay on admissions.

The high court had earlier ordered Iit-kanpur, which had conducted the IIT entrance exams, to redraw the rank list for Joint Entrance Examination-advanced (JEE-ADV) exam held in May, the results for which were announced in June.

IIT officials said that the order was a relief as they were worried about having to redo the admission process .

“We explained to the court how doing the admission process again would affect thousands

of candidates who have already confirmed admissions, and were thus allowed to continue admissions smoothly,” said an official from the Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JOSAA).

The third seat allocation was released on Tuesday itself, and so was the updated admissions schedule.

A day after over 1.5 lakh students appeared for the JEE Advanced examination, Iitkanpur

had released a statement saying that students’ answers for questions, which did not have multiple choices will be evaluated depending on the question.

This year, not only did the exam go completely computerbased, but students had also pointed how the pattern of questions were different. Almost 45% of the 54 questions in papers I and II having numerical answer-type questions, had no multiple choices. Originally, the exam-conducting authority had instructed candidates to answer in correct numerical value in decimal notation, rounded off to the second decimal place.

However, the statement by Iit-kanpur a day after the JEEADV exam read, “For numerical answer-type questions, the numerical value entered by the candidate will be evaluated. Wherever applicable, answers will be evaluated by checking if the candidate’s answers fall within a range of two values of the range depending on the question.”

Miffed, a student filed a petition in the Madras high court, represented by her father, seeking a direction to quash the clarification issued by the IIT-K against its original instructions given during the May 20 exam.