IITS MAY RELAX NORMS FOR ADMISSION

79 students were denied admissions despite clearing the two-tier exam since they did not meet the third criteria of figuring among the top 20 percentile holders in their respective boards

In wake of 79 students moving the court for denial of admission in the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) despite cracking the JEE Advanced, the second of the two-tier examination, the Joint Admission Board (JAB) comprising the IIT directors is meeting here on Sunday to relax the norms further for the graduation courses, but only from the next academic year.

These students were denied admissions despite clearing the two-tier exam since they did not meet the third criteria of figuring among the top 20 percentile holders in their respective boards. The eligibility criteria is proposed to be revised to entertain for admission also those getting 80 per cent or more marks in Class XII board exam.

If the JAB approves the proposal, it will go to the IIT council for a final decision in its meeting on September 3. The new criteria will remove the confusion created in calculation of the top 20 percentile cut-off in the Class XII score in the respective boards. While the Central Board of Secondary Education and 28 state boards worked out the percentile by considering the total number of candidates who appeared in the Class XII exam, the IITs considered the number of students passing the exam as the sample size and that resulted in a higher percentile worked out to reject 79 students.

From this year, the admission process in IITs and the National Institutes of Technology has gone through several changes.

A two-tier entrance exam — Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Main and JEE Advanced — have been introduced in place of the AIEEE and the IIT-JEE, respectively.

All candidates had to clear the JEE Main. Only the top 1.5 lakh candidates from the JEE Main were allowed to sit for the JEE Advanced for entering the IITs.