The Union Minister of Education Ramesh Pokhriyal on Tuesday announced relaxation in admission criteria for NITs and centrally funded technical institutions by waiving off the requirement of 75 per cent marks in class 12. This comes right after he had announced that the criteria to sit for JEE Advanced will no longer include the 75 per cent clause.

"Considering the decision taken for IIT JEE(Advanced) and in line with the decision taken for the last academic year, it has been decided to waive off the 75 per cent marks (in class 12 exam) eligibility criteria under Joint Entrance Examination (Main) for the next academic year 2021-2022 in respect of NITs, IIITs, SPAs and other CFTIs, whose admissions are based on JEE (Main)," Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal tweeted.

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In the wake of COVID-19 outbreak, the Central Seat Allocation Board (CSAB) had last year relaxed norms for admissions into National Institute of Technology (NITs) and Centrally Funded Technical Institutions (CFTIs).

As per the relaxation, NITs will admit undergraduate students based on their performance in Joint Entrance Exam-Mains (JEE-Mains) and will discount the class 12 board examination marks in the selection process.

Earlier, along with the performance in JEE-Mains, NITs used to demand either 75 per cent mark in the board examinations or a place in the top 20 percentile of their respective boards.