Union Education Minister announces JEE-Advanced to be held on July 3

The Joint Entrance Examination -Advanced (JEE- Advanced), which form the eligibility criteria for aspirants to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), will be held nationwide on July 3. Making the announcement on Thursday, Union Minister for Education Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ also said that this year’s JEE-Advanced will be conducted by IIT-Kharagpur.

In his address, he said that the criteria of requiring minimum 75% marks in class 12 board exams to write the JEE-Advanced has been relaxed this year too. In 2020, the minimum mark requirement was relaxed on account of COVID-19 pandemic. He added that the students have enough time to prepare well for the exam this year.

The minister had earlier announced that JEE- Mains will be held four times in 2021, starting in February. The test is planned to be conducted once in a month until May 2021, thereby providing aspirants with more flexibility. The candidates can choose to appear once or more than once and their best performance will be considered for admissions, if they choose the latter option. While the syllabus for JEE-Mains remains unchanged, the minister said that a proposal to allow candidates to answer just 75 questions out of 90 questions like in 2020 is under consideration. In 2020, the aspirants had to answer 75 questions -- 25 each in Physics, Mathematics and Chemistry.

While JEE-Mains is the admission criteria for the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and other centrally-funded technological universities, JEE-Advanced is the admission criteria for the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).

In 2020, JEE-Mains were held from September 1 to September 6. Initially scheduled to be held in April-May, the exam was postponed to July due to the COVID-19 pandemic and then was again postponed to September. Though several parties including students petitioned the Supreme Court to postpone or cancel the exams in 2020, the apex court refused to grant any relief to the petitioners.