JEE Main 2026: NTA revises chemistry answer keys after complaints

NTA Director General Abhishek Singh responded to the complaints and said the matter would be checked with subject experts

New Delhi: The National Testing Agency (NTA) on Sunday said it has “reviewed” the provisional answer keys of Paper 1 (BE/BTech) of the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Main 2026 Session 2 and corrected errors of 19 chemistry questions from the April 5 (Shift 2) examination, following complaints from candidates and teachers.

The provisional answer keys were released on Saturday around 9.30 pm. (HT File Photo)

The move comes a day after the agency acknowledged concerns raised on social media regarding “discrepancies” in the provisional chemistry answer keys.

The provisional answer keys were released on Saturday around 9.30 pm. Following this students and faculties of various coaching institutes flagged errors. NTA Director General Abhishek Singh responded to the complaints on X and said the matter would be checked with subject experts.

On Sunday morning, NTA posted on X that the reported “discrepancies” were “under verification” and expressed regret for the inconvenience caused. By afternoon, the agency confirmed that the provisional keys had been reviewed and necessary corrections made.

According to a senior NTA official, a “technical glitch” led to mismatches between question IDs and correct option IDs in 19 chemistry questions. “These have now been corrected in the updated provisional answer keys. Candidates can access the updated answer keys and raise challenges, if any,” the official said.

Candidates can challenge the provisional answer keys online by paying a non-refundable fee of ₹200 per question until 11:50 pm on April 13. “If a challenge is found to be correct, the answer key will be revised and applied to the responses of all candidates accordingly. The final answer keys, as determined by experts after evaluating all challenges, will be binding,” NTA said in a notice dated April 11.

While the agency has not specified a date for the final answer key, officials said it will be released after all challenges are reviewed. As per an earlier notification dated April 8, results for JEE (Main) 2026 Session 2 (Paper 1) are expected to be declared by April 20.

NTA conducted Paper 1 of JEE (Main) 2026 Session 2 between April 2 and 8 in multiple shifts across 567 centres in 306 cities in India and 14 cities abroad. Around 11.06 lakh candidates appeared for Paper 1, which is the national-level entrance test for admission to engineering programmes at premier institutions including the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and other centrally funded technical institutes.

Paper 1 (BE/BTech) of JEE Main consists of three sections — physics, chemistry and mathematics — with a total of 90 questions (30 in each subject). Of these, candidates are required to attempt 75 questions (25 per subject). Each subject includes 20 multiple-choice questions (MCQs) and 10 numerical value-based questions, out of which any five are to be attempted. Each correct answer carries four marks, while one mark is deducted for every incorrect MCQ response. There is no negative marking for unanswered questions. The total maximum marks for the paper are 300.