A petition has been filed against the 75% eligibility criteria for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) (Main) and the hearing will be taken up on Monday, May 29, tweeted Advocate Anubha Shrivastava Sahai. The session will be presided over by Justice JK Maheshwari and Justice Sanjay Karol.

What happened during the Bombay High Court hearing?
The petition to the Supreme Court was filed after the Bombay High Court refused to order relaxation on the 75% eligibility criteria for admission into top engineering institutes like the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs). The petition was dismissed on the grounds that the relaxation would affect the other students who have scored above 75% marks in their Board exams.

The court also added that the matter is a pan-India examination and not just limited only to Maharashtra, so the court had its limitation regarding the plea.
The criterion for admission to these top institutes was relaxed for two years, 2021 and 2022 given the country was still reeling out of a devastating pandemic the National Testing Agency (NTA), the body which conducts the exam, reinstated the old rule which was not welcomed by a section of students.

Following this, a PIL (Public Interest Litigation) was filed in the Bombay High Court by activist and advocate Anubha Shrivastava Sahai. The PIL stated that many candidates are from batches that were not assessed on the basis of performance in the previous years as the Board exams were cancelled due to COVID-19.

The petitioner argued that there are students with less than 75% but could perform well in JEE Main and if a fair chance is denied to them, it will affect their future.

The NTA has dismissed all the statements by saying that the rules were not a recent imposition and had been operating before the pandemic. The relaxation of the rules was just a temporary measure taken during COVID.