The court also granted relief to petitioners who dropped out of their courses.
The Supreme Court has refused to intervene with the decision of exam authority Joint Admission Board (JAB) to reduce the attempts of the Joint Entrance Examination (Advanced) from three to two. The court passed the order in response to a writ petition filed by aspirants challenging JAB's November decision to reduce the limit of the attempt for the competitive exam. The court agreed on Friday to examine a plea against bringing down the exam attempts from three to two.
The Joint Admission Board on November 5, 2024, announced that three attempts would be given for JEE (Advanced). However, within two weeks, the board reversed the decision and said that only two attempts would be given. Some of the petitioners said that they had dropped out of their engineering courses after the November 5 decision which raised the number of attempts to three.
The court also granted relief to petitioners, who dropped out of their courses between November 5-18, 2024, by allowing them to take part in the exam.
"The JAB, vide its press release dated November 5, 2024, first fixed the permissible number of attempts for JEE-Advanced at three, only to change it abruptly vide another press release dated November 18, 2024, and thereby reducing the number of attempts to two," news agency PTI quoted from the petition.
The plea added, "The abrupt changes in the eligibility criteria has affected the petitioner as well as thousands of similarly situated persons denying them a valuable opportunity to enter the IITs. The plea said the change in eligibility criteria was against the principles of natural justice and the impugned notification is also in violation of principles of legitimate expectation and promissory estoppel."
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