The Supreme Court on Thursday sought response from the Centre and others on a plea seeking a direction to allow students, who had passed Class 12 exams in 2023, to participate in JEE-Advanced 2025 for securing admissions in the prestigious IITs.
The matter came up before a bench comprising Justices B R Gavai and Augustine George Masih. The bench issued notice to the Centre, the Joint Admission Board (JAB) and others seeking their responses. "Issue notice, returnable on April 21, 2025," the bench said. Senior advocate Shadan Farasat represented the petitioners before the bench. The JAB conducts the JEE-Advanced.
The plea, filed through advocate Mrinmoi Chatterjee, said that the lack of uniformity in a number of attempts in JEE-Mains and Advanced deprives the petitioners of equal opportunity to secure admission in IIT compared to students who have passed XII in 2024 and 2025.
The petition has been filed by 18 Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) aspirants who had passed their Class 12 exams in 2023. The plea contended that though they were eligible to appear for a final attempt in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE)-Mains in 2025, they were rendered ineligible to appear in the JEE-Advanced, which is scheduled to be held on May 18, 2025.
Admissions in the IITs, the plea said, were secured through a two-step entrance examination JEE-Mains followed by JEE-Advanced and JEE-Mains is held in two sessions in a year. The plea said the restriction/limit on a number of attempts to only two is inadequate, excessive and against the interest of the thousands of IIT aspirants, including the petitioners.
The plea contended that the petitioners were aggrieved by the arbitrary policy reversal regarding the eligibility criteria for JEE-Advanced 2025 by the JAB. The plea said JAB initially increased the permissible attempts from two to three on November 5, 2024, only to rescind it on November 18 last year.
