A total of 1.6 lakh candidates have registered for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE)-Advanced after qualifying the JEE-Main. The exam is scheduled for September 27.

"As many as 97.94 per cent of candidates who have registered and paid the fee for IIT JEE Advanced 2020 have been allocated examination cities, which fall under the top three choices they had made during the registration. The rest of 2.06 per cent has also been allocated exam cities from eight choices made by them during registration," a senior official of IIT Delhi said.

"The examination cities to the candidates have been finally allocated completely randomly, based on an advanced algorithm, to achieve the most efficient distribution. The algorithm also takes note of the fact that these are challenging times because of COVID-19 and physical distancing needs to be maintained at each centre to ensure their safety," he added.

The official claimed that the number of exam centres has been increased from 600 last year to 1000 and the number of exam cities has also been increased from 164 to 222.

The Joint Entrance Exam (JEE)-Mains for admission to engineering colleges was conducted from September 1 to 6, amid stringent precautions and social distancing measures in view of COVID-19 pandemic.

Staggered entry and exit for candidates, sanitisers at the gate, distribution of masks and maintaining distance as candidates queued up, were among the scenes witnessed at the exam centres across the country.

While a total of 8.58 lakh candidates had registered for the JEE-Mains exam, 2.5 lakh of  the candidates were eligible to appear for JEE-Advanced exam which is conducted for admission to IITs across the country.