JEE-Advanced: SC agrees to hear plea against cut in exam attempts

The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to examine a plea against bringing down from three to two, the attempts given to Joint Entrance Examination (JEE)-Advanced aspirants.

When the plea came up before a bench of Justices B R Gavai and Augustine George Masih, the petitioner's counsel said, "This matter pertains to the IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) admission entrance examination in which the number of attempts have been reduced from three to two."

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The lawyer said a similar plea was listed before the bench on January 10 following which the court directed both to be tagged.

The fresh plea, filed through advocate Sanjeet Kumar Trivedi, said it related to the process for admissions into the prestigious IITs but the joint admission board (JAB), entrusted to conduct the JEE-Advanced exam, changed the eligibility criteria for students in an "arbitrary" manner.

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"The JAB, vide its press release dated November 5, 2024, first fixed the permissible number of attempts for JEE-Advanced at three, only to change it abruptly vide another press release dated November 18, 2024, and thereby reducing the number of attempts to two," the plea said.

"The abrupt changes in the eligibility criteria," it said, "has affected the petitioner as well as thousands of similarly situated persons denying them a valuable opportunity to enter the IITs."

The plea said the change in eligibility criteria was against the principles of natural justice and added, "The impugned notification is also in violation of principles of legitimate expectation and promissory estoppel."

Seeking setting aside of the November 18, 2024 press release, it said the change disentitled and disqualified many students from taking the JEE-Advanced 2025 exam.