JEE: Supreme Court gave a verdict in favor of students, said- 'Those who left college in November will appear in Advanced exam'

The Supreme Court has clarified that the students who left college between November 5 and November 18 last year on the basis of JAB's notification are entitled to appear in the JEE Advanced exam.

The Supreme Court has allowed those JEE Advanced candidates to register for the upcoming exam, who left college between November 5 and November 18 last year. On Friday, the court allowed the petitioners who left the course to register for Joint Entrance Examination (JEE)-Advanced. A bench of Justice BR Gavai and Justice Augustine George Masih passed this order while hearing the petitions against reducing the number of attempts given to JEE-Advanced candidates from three to two.

The apex court said the Joint Entrance Board (JAB), which is tasked with conducting the JEE-Advanced exam, had issued a press release on November 5 last year stating that students appearing for class 12 exams in the academic years 2023, 2024 and 2025 would be eligible to appear for the JEE-Advanced exam. The bench said another press release was issued on November 18, 2024, restricting the eligibility to only two academic years - 2024 and 2025. Two petitions were being heard

The bench said, "If the students have dropped out of their course in accordance with the said representation (November 5) with the understanding that they would be entitled to take the JEE exam, then the decision of November 18, 2024, cannot be allowed to harm them." Without considering the merits of the JAB's decision, the apex court said that students who left the course between November 5 and November 18, 2024, would also be allowed to register for the exam. The apex court was hearing two petitions, one of which was filed by 22 candidates, challenging the reduction of the number of attempts for JEE-Advanced from three to two.

What was in the petition?

During the hearing, the lawyer appearing for the petitioners said that due to the promise made in the press release of November 5, 2024, they left the college to appear in the examination conducted for admission to IIT. Another petition filed through advocate Sanjit Kumar Trivedi said that the matter pertains to the admission process to IITs and JAB has arbitrarily changed the eligibility criteria for students.

The petition filed by a candidate said, "JAB first fixed the allowable number of attempts for JEE-Advanced as three through its press release dated November 5, 2024, but suddenly changed it by issuing another press release dated November 18, 2024, and thus reduced the number of attempts to two. " (Input- PTI Bhasha)