Member of Parliament (MP) from the Coimbatore constituency PR Natarajan on January 11 wrote to the union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan seeking "a one-time exemption to relax the eligibility criteria for all students appearing for the JEE Main and Advanced Exams in 2023." Listing the reason for this, he said, "This will save the hassle of identifying specific students who faced difficulties in the 202 exams."
To note, the JEE Main 2023 Session I is scheduled to be held from January 24 to 31, while the second session will be held between April 6 and April 12. Regarding the postponement of the exam, on January 10, the Bombay High Court gave its order stating, "Any orders passed to postpone may have a cascading effect. If a student does not fare well in JEE January, he can compete in April. Extraordinary circumstances don't seem to exist. It wouldn't be appropriate to restrain the respondent from conducting a pan-India exam," said the bench, according to a tweet by LiveLaw.
Moreover, with regards to the request for relief related to the 75% eligibility criteria to qualify for NITs and IIITs, the court stated that the counsel for the petitioner had requested additional time to file a rejoinder and present arguments and that it will be appropriate to consider closer to the date of the counselling in June.
Listing out the issues which were encountered in 2022 like- last minute changes in exam centres, technical glitches, server crashes down, frozen screens, taking too long to load, incomplete questions etc. he said, these glitches denied the candidates a fair attempt at the exam, which resulted in many candidates witnessing huge decrements in their score/percentile, the letter read.
"A significant number of students who fell prey to these difficulties in JEE Main or JEE Advanced were availing their last attempt at these exams this year. For students who graduated class XII in 2020, it was their last attempt at both JEE Main & JEE Advanced this year and for those that graduated in 2021, it was their last attempt at JEE Advanced this year," the letter highlighted.
Meanwhile, Tweeting about this, All India Students Dental Association (AISDA) / DENTODONTICS posted expressing gratitude for the MP's support to the JEE aspirants. "All students who faced hurdles during their #JEEMain & #JEEAdvanced 2022 exam, express their deep gratitude towards @PRNatarajan sir, for his support in amplifying their voices during this challenging time.
