Acting on the Prime Minister’s intervention, the HRD Ministry is learnt to have conceived a modified proposal for admission into the IITs. The new proposal that has been sent to the IIT Joint Admission Board (JAB) seeks to drastically restrict the number of aspirants appearing for the Joint Entrance Examination (Advanced).
As per the proposal, only 20 per cent of the top scorers in the Plus Two Exam in each Board (CBSE, ICSE and State Boards) would be eligible to appear for the JEE (Advanced) test that would be conducted by the IITs. The proposal has been “verbally communicated” by JAB Chairman and IIT Delhi Director R K Shevgaonkar to office bearers of the All India IIT Faculty Federation. It shall be finalised after wider consultation with faculty across the IITs.
The plan is in complete contrast to the controversial ‘one-nation, one-test’ policy mooted earlier by the Ministry which provided for an ‘unscientific’ percentile normalisation of Plus Two marks.
Informed sources said that students who do not fall within the top 20 per cent performers’ category would be automatically eliminated from the race. There will also be another stage of “gating” or “filtering” based on the performance of candidates in the JEE (Preliminary) paper.