On one hand, there are proposals on scrapping JEE Advanced, on the other hand, now the Government is suggesting a Panel which would discuss and resolve issues on why the number of students qualifying for JEE Advanced is dipping year after year. This will be 5 member panel which will be headed by IIT Madras Director, Bhaskar Ramamurthy. The other suggested members of this panel are Abhay Karandikar, director of IIT-Kanpur, Vineet Joshi, director general of National Testing Agency, and Professor Kannan Moudgalya of IIT-Bombay.
This proposal of creation of the panel will be discussed at the IIT Council meeting on August 21, 2018. IIT Council is the highest decision-making body of all the IITs.
The issue because of which this panel is suggested by the Government is that there is a very less number of candidates who are qualifying JEE Advanced. Actually, this number is dropping year after year. This year in the JEE Advanced only 18,138 candidates were there. This is the smallest pool of qualified candidates since 2012.
As per a news report, since 2013, when IIT JEE was renamed JEE Advanced, the number of candidates who qualified had always been at least twice the number of seats on offer. But this year it was only 1.6 times the total seats.
As a result, as per the last minute order by the MHRD, IIT Kanpur the organising IIT of JEE Advanced 2018, added another 8,954 general candidates, 3,824 OBC candidates, 771 SCs and 293 from ST category to the merit list, taking the total up to 31,980 candidates – a list of candidates which was twice the number of seats in each discipline and category, strictly as per merit.
This was never done before. Thus, to avoid such an embarrassing situation in the future, the Government wants to construct this 5 member Panel. The aim of this Panel will be to develop a robust and scientifically designed entrance exam system to test the potential of the candidates as well as to reduce their dependence on coaching institutes.
This proposal of creating a panel is connected with another proposal that has suggested by few of the IITs to let the qualifying candidates select the IIT of their choice and not the engineering branch. According to the suggestion, the student should be allocated an engineering branch only in the second year, based on the aptitude exhibited in the first year.
Now other proposals of scrapping JEE Advanced, making JEE Main the only exam for IIT admissions and doing away with the B.Tech courses at the IITs are also to be discussed at the IIT Council meeting. However, the Governments proposal to form a Panel to reform JEE Advanced examination blurs the former proposals. Thus, on August 21, after the IIT council meeting, the fate of the JEE Advanced examination will be finalised.
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