IIT exam: 2-attempt bar may be delayed

Implementation of changes in the IIT selection process, announced by the Government earlier this week, may be partly delayed by a year, that...

Implementation of changes in the IIT selection process, announced by the Government earlier this week, may be partly delayed by a year, that is until the 2007 Joint Entrance Examination.

This was indicated today by officials of the Ministry of Human Resource Development.

Such a move will help students who are preparing for their third or further attempts to gain admission into the IITs.

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A final decision on this will be taken at the joint advisory board of JEE scheduled to meet in Kolkata on September 17.

Under the new selection process, an IIT aspirant can sit for the JEE only twice: the first attempt has to be in the year of clearing Class XII and the second the year after that. Changes in IIT admissions are supposed to come into effect from JEE 2006 and the advisory board is to finetune the new procedure.

The abrupt decision to limit the number of attempts affected several aspirants who were preparing for their third or further attempts.

‘‘We do not want anything to affect students retrospectively. I am sure the board meeting will find a way out on this particular point whereas changes in the question pattern could take effect from the next JEE onward,’’ an official said.

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The JEE advisory board has representatives from all seven IITs and a representative of the Ministry.

The official said other changes such as making 60 per cent marks the new eligibility for IIT and altering the pattern of questions have been taken after long deliberations and analyses of data of several years, on IIT selection.