JEE Mains 2020: Registrations for Phase 1 falls by 7,000

Registrations for the first phase of Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Mains 2020 ended last week and the National Testing Agency (NTA) released data on the same

Registrations for the first phase of Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Mains 2020 ended last week and the National Testing Agency (NTA) released data on the same on Monday. This time, total registrations witnessed a marginal dip to 9.34 lakh from 9.41 for the 2019 exams.

HT Image

The data further revealed that total registrations in the open category dropped by almost 90,000 due to the inclusion of the economically weaker section (EWS) category. This category was not included in the first phase of JEE Mains 2019 but has accounted for 81,000 registered candidates for the January 2020 session.

The exam will once again be held in two phases in the online format, only. The first phase will take place between January 6 and 11, 2020 and results will be announced by the end of January.

“The exam format and difficulty level will remain the same for both sessions. Students have given us a very positive response about this format,” said Vineet Joshi, director-general, NTA.

Till 2018, JEE-Mains was held in only one session, since its introduction in 2013. The number of registrations stood at 11.89 lakh in 2018 and 11.86 lakh in 2017.

In comparison to the 2018 numbers, 2019 saw a dip of 2.48 lakh registrations. This, combined with increasing vacant seats in engineering institutes across the country, forced the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) to introduce a ban on new engineering institutes from 2020. This year, seat vacancy in state engineering colleges stood at 48%. “Despite the ban, engineering seats are finding very few takers because students are not finding jobs after the course. Many sectors of engineering have become obsolete and therefore, students are not opting for admissions to such courses at all, leading to high seat vacancy,” said a senior professor from IIT-Kanpur, on condition of anonymity.

Since last year, several attempts have also been made by all Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) to attract more women students. HT had recently reported how most IITs had managed to fill around 17% of their first-year batch with women students (as prescribed by the IIT Council). In the 2020 batch, IITs should have at least 20% women students.

Total women candidates registering for the first phase of JEE Mains had also gone up by a few thousand. In January 2019, 2.75 lakh women candidates appeared for the exam, and over 2.90 lakh women candidates have registered for the January 2020 exam.