The Supreme Court will hear tomorrow, August 26, a petition filed by students who appeared for the second session of Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Main 2022. Student activists and associations have been demanding an extra attempt of the exam, citing irregularities during the exam.
The petition has been filed seeking directions to the National Testing Agency (NTA) to conduct additional sessions of the national-level exam, as stated in a report by ENS. The exam was held from July 25 to July 30, 2022. Relief has also been sought to compensate all the affected students having their last attempt in 2022 by providing a one-time relaxation of eligibility for JEE Main 2023 and JEE Advanced 2023, as per ENS.
Advocate Sumanth Nookala informed EdexLive that two petitions filed against the NTA will be heard in this regard in court number II, which will be presided over by Justice DY Chandrachud. The serial numbers of the cases are 17 and 17.1, he said.
The students in the petition filed through Advocate Sumanth Nookala have argued that the technical glitches faced by them that hampered their performance should be compensated by conducting an additional session, as per ENS. They also said that numerous representations were made to the NTA continuously since June 2022 but there was no response or public notice informing the applicants that the second session of JEE Main would be conducted again.
What happened during the JEE Main exam?
Session I of the exam was held from June 23 to June 29, whereas the second session was held from July 25 to July 30. Multiple students who attempted the exam faced problems like technical glitches, change of exam centres at the last minute and discrepancies in the answer key.
During the first attempt of the JEE Main 2022 exam, several students were allotted centres that weren’t chosen by them in the first place. Vaibhav Dinkar of the All India Students’ Union (AISU) had earlier informed EdexLive that there were technical glitches during the exam as well. For example, screens were frozen for around 15 to 30 minutes and extra time was not granted to these students. In some cases, the timer wasn’t visible on students’ screens.
However, he added that these problems weren’t just limited to the first attempt at the exam — it was prevalent even during the second attempt. Students and parents have also claimed that the response sheets released by the NTA were wrong and not the same as that of their students.
