Flayed, IITs offer ‘correction’

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have promised to rectify any marking error that emerges from disclosed answer sheets of students appearing for Sunday’s Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) — irrespective of when students are allowed to see the sheets. Charu Sudan Kasturi reports.

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have promised to rectify any marking error that emerges from disclosed answer sheets of students appearing for Sunday’s Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) — irrespective of when students are allowed to see the sheets.The assurance comes amid concerns over the failure of the IITs to state when they will fulfil their promise of placing online scanned answer sheets of the 4.85 lakh students appearing for the Sunday's test.

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“I think these concerns are unnecessary. If there is an error in marking identified on the basis of the scanned answer scripts placed online at any stage, it will be addressed and justice will be provided,” Sanjay Dhande, director of IIT Kanpur, in-charge of organising the JEE this year, told Hindustan Times.

HT was the first to report — on March 26 — the dramatic admissions reform that will for the first time allow students to see their Optical Response Sheets (ORS) and compare them with the correct answers.

On March 27, Dhande announced the reforms publicly. But in a press statement earlier this week, the IITs said correct answers would be made public only on May 15 and the scanned ORSs made public only “after May 25” — the date when results are announced. Online counseling for the IITs begins on May 30.

The failure of the IITs to specify a date for making public the answer scripts has triggered concerns that the ORS may be placed online only after May 30 — when counseling starts — or even later.

The concerns revolve around fears that the IITs may at that stage claim it is too late to correct errors they made.