Govt directs IITs to issue supplementary merit list for JEE-Advanced

In an unprecedented move, the HRD Ministry has issued directions to the Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) to release a supplementary merit list for admission this year. The government issued late-night directions on Wednesday to the director of IIT Kanpur, which is the organising institute for JEE-Advanced this year.

The Indian Express has learnt that IIT Kanpur has been asked to release a merit list with the number of candidates, which is twice the number of total seats on offer in each discipline and each category (general and reserved categories). The institute will have to release the supplementary merit list before choice-filling for joint seat allocation for IITs and NITs begins this week.

As reported by this newspaper on Monday, since 2013, when IIT-JEE was renamed JEE-Advanced and the eligibility criteria for the entrance test was tweaked, the number of candidates who qualified the exam has always been at least twice the number of seats on offer. This year, however, the 18,138 students on the merit list are only 1.6 times the total seats, making it the smallest number of qualified candidates since 2012.

This is the first time that the cut-off marks will be revised after the declaration of results. According to sources, this directive has gone to ensure the government’s policy, that all reserved category seats should be filled, is not compromised.

The IITs had met on Wednesday to discuss concerns whether there are enough qualified candidates to fill all the seats this year, but decided against tweaking the cut-off marks for JEE-Advanced, at that point.

However, now another meeting of the Joint Admission Board or JAB is scheduled to take place today, in wake of government’s late night direction on Wednesday.

In 2015, IIT-Mumbai, the organising institute for JEE-Advanced that year, had lowered the bar after evaluation as an adequate number of aspirants failed to make the cut. But this was done before the declaration of results.
News Source (Indian Express)