A group of 283 students has written to the directors of all the Indian Institutes of Technology, seeking an extra attempt for all the students who exhausted their last attempt at cracking the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) in 2020, amid the pandemic. The copies of the letter were also sent to the NTA and the Ministry of Education. The entrance examination was held on September 27, despite the parents and students seeking a postponement.

In the letter, the students say that a lot of them had missed out on the examination owing to contracting the Coronavirus, being stuck in containment zones and the lockdown. "The nationwide lockdown created an unequal opportunity for preparation, closure of institutions and lack of study materials created an uneven playing field. Aspirants stranded in odd locations due to lockdown had their studies immensely disturbed," reads the letter. "When JEE Advanced and JEE Mains were conducted, public transportation and accommodation facilities were meagre or simply non-existent, accompanied by the fact that a lot of parts of India were experiencing heavy floods," it reads.

The results of JEE Advanced 2020 were out on October 5. Of the 1,50,838 students who appeared for the exams, only 43,204 passed, making the pass per cent 28.64%. The nation topper Chirag Falor had opted out of the race for an IIT seat after he landed a seat at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He had then complained that it was quite suffocating to write the exam with a mask on. "The exams were challenging because we had to wear a mask all the time. I felt suffocated after a while. It also sends less oxygen to the brain and slows you down," he said, speaking with EdexLive.


Previously, a Joint Admission Board (JAB) meeting held at IIT Delhi had decided to allow students who missed their exam in 2020 to attempt the exam one more time in 2021.