JEE Main 2021 aspirants were caught by surprise when the National Testing Agency (NTA) announced the revised dates for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Main 2021 April and May (postponed) sessions on July 06, 2021. The 3rd session has been scheduled from July 20 to 25, 2021, while the fourth session has been scheduled from July 27 to August 02, 2021.
To everyone’s surprise, NTA has provided a gap of just 2 days between the consecutive sessions. With minimal preparation time for the fourth session, #JusticeforJEEAspirants is trending on Twitter. Students are tweeting incessantly on the social media platform, expressing their views against the NTA’s decision.
While the students are divided on the postponement of JEE main 2021 4th session, a student body recently wrote a letter to the newly-appointed Education Minister of India, Dharmendra Pradhan through Twitter. According to the letter, a gap between consecutive exams is crucial for students to understand their mistakes in the previous exams. The same mistakes would then, not be committed in the following exam. therefore, students would gain more confidence in attempting the subsequent session.
Meanwhile, a group of students have filed a case against NTA, to postpone the exam. The proceedings of the case, are yet to come to light.
The letter did acknowledge that NTA was forced to take this decision to not cause any further delay in the upcoming academic calendar. However, this small gap may severely impact the students’ future, and this has no logical explanation to justify. Therefore, the student body demanded a postponement of at least 15 days from two days for conducting the JEE Main 2021 May (Postponed) session.
Another reason for postponement cited in the letter was that the JEE Main 2021 May (Postponed) dates are clashing with the dates of other exams at various levels. This will create chaos for the candidates and shall invariably, affect their performance in the national-level entrance examination.
The letter represents the views of various students who did express similar views of Twitter using the hashtag #JusticeforJEEAspirants. However, few other students are stating that there has already been far too much delay in the conduct of JEE Main 2021 examination. Some experts agree that postponement is needed to tackle the fear of the impending third wave of COVID-19. However, the current schedule that NTA has put out is helpful to begin the 2021-22 session on time.
NTA also has the responsibility of conducting the JEE Advanced 2021 examination while not causing any further delay in the academics of students. This is another reason why NTA may have provided such a short gap between the consecutive sessions. While the students are incessantly demanding the postponement of the 4th session, NTA and the education ministry are yet to acknowledge to respond to these requests.
Edit – Edited to add about the case filed against NTA, as listed on SC website.
