HC asks NTA to explain the purpose behind 75% marks in HSC for JEE

The Bombay High Court has asked the National Testing Agency to respond to a PIL challenging the requirement of getting 75% marks in HSC exams for appearing for the JEE-Main and explain the purpose of setting the criteria. The PIL claims that the marks scored by the students were not a true reflection of their capabilities and hence sought relaxation of the criterion. The NTA has been asked to file the affidavit within a week, and the hearing has been posted for next week.

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court (HC) has asked the National Testing Agency (NTA) to respond to a public interest litigation (PIL) which has challenged the requirement of getting 75% marks in HSC exams for appearing for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE-Main) and explain the purpose of setting the criteria while there are qualifying exams for admissions to the IITs, NITs and IIITs.

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The division bench of acting chief justice SV Gangapurwala and justice SV Marne was hearing the PIL filed by child activist Anubha Sahai. In the hearing, the bench was informed that the criteria had put at disadvantage the students who were assessed based on their performance in previous examinations due to Covid-19 in the academic year 2020-21 and 2021-22. Sahai claimed that the marks scored by the students were not a true reflection of their capabilities and hence sought relaxation of the criterion.

Advocate Rui Rodrigues, for NTA submitted that candidates had to either score 75% marks in the board exams or would have to be in the top 20 percentile of their respective boards.

Sahai, however, submitted that many boards had stopped releasing data of top 20 percentile after 2019. She further added that there was a difference in the score for percentile between different boards and placed the cut-off data for 2019 before the bench which showed that the score for top 20 percentile in certain boards was even higher than 75%.

The bench then sought to know why the earlier criteria of 50% marks in HSC exams was changed to 75% to which Rodrigues submitted that such a criterion was not newly added. Rodrigues further stated that the 75% criteria was for admission to IITs and not for appearing for the JEE mains exam, hence any student with lesser marks could also appear for the JEE (Main).

However, the court was not satisfied and asked the NTA to file an affidavit elaborating the reasons behind introducing such a criterion while there were already qualifying exams for admissions to IITs, NITs and IIITs. The NTA has been asked to file the affidavit within a week and hearing has been posted to next week.

Though the eligibility criterion was relaxed in the pandemic years, IIT brought back the 75% marks in HSC exams as a prerequisite in its 2023 JEE brochure for admission to NITs, IIITs, and CFTIs. The brochure stated that for the open category, the candidate should have either scored 75% in HSC exams or should be within the category-wise top 20 percentile of their respective boards.

A student who scored 92 percentile in JEE Mains and was eligible to appear for JEE-Advanced exams filed an interim application stating that she had scored 72% in her HSC exams but due to the 75% criteria she was debarred from getting admission in any of the top institutions. She alleged that such an eligibility criterion was discriminatory.

Earlier in January, Sahai had sought postponement of the JEE (Main) that was scheduled to be held from January 24 to 31, however, the HC had rejected the plea.