CHENNAI: The much awaited JEE 2016 (Main) examination result declared on Wednesday saw increased cut-off marks for the SC and ST community, traditionally least represented in the country’s premier technical institutes, in comparison with last year’s score.
Nearly two lakh students, out of a total of 11,94,938, have qualified for JEE (Advanced). This year, the cut-off for general category students is 100, for OBC (non creamy layer) is 70, for SC (52) and ST (48).
Commenting on the cut-off marks, K Radhakrishnan of TIME Institute (Chennai), said that while the cut-offs for general and OBC categories have been along expected lines, the cut-ff for SC and ST students has seen an increase over the last year. “The cutoff score for SC has increased by two marks (50 in 2015) while for ST, it has shot up by four marks (44),” he said. Incidentally, the cutoff score for general category has reduced from 105 in 2015 to 100 this year.
This comes in the backdrop of the Education Ministry restricting fee waiver for those SC/ST students only to families below the prescribed annual income ceiling (`5 lakh pa). This had created a stir among SC/ST students as many among them wouldn’t be eligible for this tuition fee waiver under the revised terms. Now with the cut-off scores for SC/ST students increasing this year, it is feared that this further reduces the chance of more of them entering the premium technical institutes in the country.
Students who have cleared JEE main will be eligible to get admission into the various undergraduate engineering programme available in NITs and other Centrally funded technical institutes in India.