JEE Main 2023: Bombay High Court reserves order on plea challenging 75% eligibility criteria

NEW DELHI: The Bombay High Court has reserved the orders on plea challenging 75 percent eligibility criteria in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Main 2023 for tomorrow, May 3, 2023, as per a Live Law report. While hearing the matter, the court said that granting relaxation on JEE Main eligibility criteria will affect students who have scored more than 75% marks in Class 12.

A bench of acting Chief Justice (CJ) SV Gangapurwala and J Sandeep V Marne hearing the matter said, “we understand the difficulty but our limitations also have to be considered regarding an exam which is pan India. Granting you relaxation will affect other students who have scored above 75%. The students (in 2022) have appeared in exams and scored these marks. This is not on the basis of previous years.”

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The petitioners argued that even after qualifying for JEE Advanced 2023, they will not be able to seek admission through JEE Advanced, if they qualify, because of the 75% eligibility criteria since they scored less.

Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Anil Singh appearing for the National Testing Agency (NTA) said that the eligibility criteria was introduced in 2017 and has not been challenged since. In 2021 and 2022, the authorities gave a one-time relaxation to students due to COVID-19 but the criteria always existed in the JEE Main information brochure. “So it is not that we have removed the condition at any time. It always existed,” said Singh. He added that all students were aware of this fact but did not take the benefit of relaxation as they wanted to improve their JEE score.

JEE Main eligibility criteria

Advocate Joseph Thattil argued that the relaxation was not mentioned in the JEE Main information brochure to which Advocate Rui Rodriguez for NTA said, “When this brochure was published, at that time a decision was already taken in principle to relax. So, subsequently the relaxation was notified.”

Moreover, when the bench asked if Class 12 students could take the improvement exam, advocate Anubha Shrivastava Sahai said that they did not take the exam as the eligibility criteria was not notified back then.

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“The marks scored by them is not a true reflection of their actual ability therefore those students with less marks than the eligibility criteria (75%) for this year’s examinations can score very high marks in the upcoming JEE Main 2023, and if a fair chance is denied to them that will affect the future (of) lakhs of bright (students)”, the petitioners had said in the plea.

NTA had last year announced to withdraw 75% eligibility criteria as a one-time measure due to academic loss. On January 11 this year, NTA revised the JEE Main eligibility criteria according to which students who have scored 75% marks or are in the top 20 percentile in Class 12 of any education board will be eligible to seek admission at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs).