The petition by a group of Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) aspirants against the abrupt and arbitrary policy reversal by the Joint Admission Board (JAB) regarding the eligibility criteria of JEE Advanced 2025 was not taken up by the Supreme Court (SC) today, Friday, December 20.

The matter, which was scheduled to be taken up by a bench of Justices BR Gavai and KV Viswanathan today has now been deferred. 

The case is likely to be heard in January. The Supreme Court’s website shows the tentative date (computer-generated) for the next listing to be January 6, 2025.

The petition argues that the JAB’s decision to abruptly reverse the policy changes regarding the number of attempts has caused the aspirants significant hardship, as many had already begun preparing for the exam with the expectation of a third attempt.

The Joint Admission Board (JAB) oversees the JEE Advanced for admissions into the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).

This year, on November 5, the JAB announced an increase in the number of attempts to three. However, on November 18, the exam-conducting authority took a u-turn, restoring the previous limit of two attempts per candidate.

Speaking to EdexLive, Parv Goyal, one of the petitioners in the case, said, “They notified about the change in eligibility criteria on November 5, while the JEE Mains registrations were still open. Many aspirants applied for the exam between November 5 and 18 after seeing the notification. After I heard about the change in policy, I deactivated all my social media accounts and started preparing for the exam.”

In the petition, it has been highlighted that several aspirants have already registered for the JEE-Main exam, enrolled in coaching programmes, and even altered their academic plans based on the assumption that the new attempt limit would be in place. Some petitioners, for example, discontinued their other academic commitments, including dropping out of other college courses or cancelling registration for other examinations like the SAT.