SC asks Centre, others to respond to plea over JEE-Advanced 2025

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday sought responses 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.

A bench of Justices B R Gavai and Augustine George Masih issued the notices to the Centre, the Joint Admission Board (JAB) and others seeking their responses. The JAB conducts the JEE-Advanced.

The petition, filed by 18 Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) aspirants who had passed their Class 12 exams in 2023, said 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. "Issue notice, returnable on April 21, 2025," the bench said. Senior advocate Shadan Farasat appeared for the petitioners.

"The lack of uniformity in 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 plea, filed through advocate Mrinmoi Chatterjee, said.

Admissions in the IITs, the plea said, was 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 petitioners were aggrieved by the "abrupt and arbitrary policy reversal" regarding the eligibility criteria for JEE-Advanced 2025 by the JAB, which initially increased the permissible attempts from two to three on November 5, 2024, only to rescind it on November 18 last year.

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Revised eligibility criteria

"The restriction/limit on number of attempts to only two is inadequate, excessive and against the interest of the thousands of IIT aspirants including the petitioners," it said. The petitioners argued the "revised" eligibility criteria only permitted candidates who had passed Class 12 in 2024 and 2025 to appear in the JEE-Advanced 2025.

The policy for JEE-Mains permitted candidates to attempt the exam up to six times, spread over a duration of three consecutive years, it added. In contrast, JEE-Advanced imposes a limit of only two attempts, the plea said. "This difference in the eligibility criteria for JEE-Mains and Advanced is irrational, discriminatory, inherently arbitrary, liable to be set aside," the plea said.

The petitioners have referred to a January 10 order passed by the apex court on a separate petition in which it noted that JAB issued a press release on November 5 last year which said students who appeared for the Class 12 examination in the years 2023, 2024 and 2025 would be eligible to appear for the JEE-Advanced.

It had further noted that on November 18, 2024, another press release was issued restricting the eligibility only to two academic years -- 2024 and 2025. The apex court then said such students, who had withdrawn from their courses and dropped out between November 5, 2024 to November 18, 2024, would be permitted to register for JEE-Advanced.