The National Testing Agency (NTA) faces mounting allegations of serious irregularities after releasing the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Main 2025 Session 2 results today, April 19, 2025. Thousands of students across India have reported alarming discrepancies that could potentially derail their engineering career aspirations.
Results released amid growing controversy
The JEE Main 2025 Session 2 results announced today showed 24 students achieving perfect 100 percentiles in the exams conducted from April 2-9. However, what should have been a day of relief for over 14 lakh aspirants has instead triggered nationwide outrage.
The controversy, which began brewing days before the result announcement, escalated dramatically when a YouTube channel JEE1 released an explosive video documenting alleged evidence of systematic problems in the examination process.
The video, featuring Namo Kaul, Founder & CEO of XAM1, and Purnima Kaul, JEE mentor and Founder of JEE One, gained over 54,000 views within just five hours of streaming.
Technical glitches and inside information
The most damning evidence presented in the viral video includes a message allegedly from a student whose father works on NTA's technical team. This insider source claims, "The issue arises because the technical aspects are split among various members, and many of them are new and inexperienced."
This revelation comes after the NTA issued a notice on April 15 acknowledging "unavoidable reasons and technical snags" before hastily removing the statement from their website – an action that many view as an attempt to cover up problems.
Statistical anomalies raise questions
Purnima Kaul and Namo Kaul highlighted suspicious patterns in the official data briefly published by NTA before being removed.
The gender distribution statistics showed approximately 9.73 lakh female candidates compared to only 5 lakh male candidates – a dramatic reversal from 2024's pattern. While in JEE 2024, male candidates formed the majority (approx. 66%), JEE1 claims that this year, females outnumber males nearly twofold — a statistical anomaly that does not match trends seen in coaching institutes or previous JEE exams, signalling possible data entry errors or manipulation.
This has been rectified. The data has since been updated on the NTA portal, showing a more realistic gender split that aligns with previous trends, although the initial publication raised serious concerns about accuracy and transparency.
Further raising suspicions, NTA claimed almost identical numbers of students appeared across different shifts, despite schedule changes due to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) exam clashes that should have resulted in uneven distribution.
According to JEE1, an internal poll of over 38,000 JEE aspirants revealed disproportionate numbers of students allocated across different shifts. The shift-wise distribution data shared in the video reportedly shows inconsistencies that could impact normalisation and cut-offs.
Response sheets and answer Keys: Students report serious issues
The video has triggered an unprecedented response from the student community, with over 2,500 comments flooding the comment section within hours. These comments reveal a pattern of response sheet errors and answer key problems affecting students' final scores.
"7 April shift 1, i attempted less questions in chemistry but in the response sheet it showed 9 extra questions and all 9 were marked wrong," wrote @Vedant_yadavv. "Also there was one question about resistance in physics, I clearly remember that I answered that question correctly but in the response sheet it's unanswered."
Another student, @Darkstar_07759, noted: "In the first attempt I got 83 marks giving me 89.5 percentile And now in the second attempt I got 108 marks and still 89.6 percentile, wow NTA. And it was 3s2 shift, one of the hardest shifts of the second attempt."
Percentile manipulation and previous results altered
Perhaps most alarming are reports that January session results appear to have been altered. "My January Session's %ile has changed from 99.12%ile to 81.63%ile," claimed @aloneboy-e6b, who says they possess response sheets from both sessions as proof.
In her interview with EdexLive, Purnima Kaul explained that the final scorecards are supposed to reflect scores from both the January and April sessions. However, in some cases, the January scores seem to have been entered incorrectly. “For example, a student who originally got 98.29 percentile in January now sees 89.29 on their final scorecard. This kind of error can’t be overlooked,” she said.
This might be claimed as just a mere technical glitch by NTA later, but the entire future and lives of these students depend on this data that is not taken seriously by the authorities.
The normalisation process itself has come under scrutiny.
Kaul cited cases where students in the 91st percentile received ranks around 3 lakh, instead of approximately 1.5 lakh, as basic percentile calculation principles would suggest.
Impact on students: Years of preparation at risk
For many students, these discrepancies threaten to derail years of dedicated preparation and sacrifice.
"Sir, my shift was 4 april shift 1 and with the final answer key my score came out to be 115 and got 92 percentile. Sir i am a dropper and this was my last attempt," wrote @tanmaysheokand. "My score could have easily been 130 if they had just corrected the key correctly... with this much less percentile i will not get any college this year too."
@aashimishra3733 shared a similar experience: "I appeared for JEE Main on 7th April Shift 1, and the paper was definitely moderate to tough. I scored 86 marks but received only 85 percentile. After preparing day and night for 2 years, this result feels completely unfair."
Mental health concerns emerge
Perhaps most concerning are the emotional toll these discrepancies are taking on students, with some commenters expressing feelings of hopelessness.
"There are so many students who are suffering. But NTA has turned a deaf ear towards all of us," said Purnima Kaul.
"Yesterday, there were several students commenting: 'Everything is over. I can't live this way. I will end my life'," Kaul reported, asking who would take responsibility if any student took such a drastic step.
She emphasised the cultural context: "These students are studying from Class XI, that's three years' worth of preparation. In Indian households, the prevailing mentality is that the child will start earning in four years, which ends up determining the child’s course of action."
"Just a prequel": Fears for upcoming NEET exams
The controversy raises significant questions about NTA's capability to handle even larger upcoming examinations.
"This is just a prequel," warned Purnima Kaul, referring to the upcoming NEET exams, where approximately 25 lakh students are expected to participate.
As pressure mounts for accountability, the NTA has yet to respond to these allegations and provide redressal.
Meanwhile, students, parents, and educators continue demanding transparency and immediate corrective action for what many are calling a systemic failure in one of India's most crucial educational assessments
