JEE Mains Exams 2022: As the students’ fight against reduced JEE Mains sessions and dates clashing/overlapping with board exams continues, a new development occurred on Thursday when a group of students and activists claimed their representation was not accepted by the (NTA) National Testing Agency. Previously, some JEE aspirants had petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn the NTA’s notice, which reduced the number of JEE Mains 2022 sessions from four to two.
The Supreme Court allowed IIT-JEE aspirants to file a complaint with the appropriate authorities in its order issued on Wednesday. A bench comprised of Justices DY Chandrachud, Surya Kant, and Bela Trivedi ruled that the court could not interfere with the authorities’ policy decisions and thus granted the petitioners the right to approach the authorities with their grievances.
According to the order of the Supreme Court, several students and parents today prepared a representation and claimed they attempted to submit it to the NTA. However, the NTA officially denied accepting the representation, claiming that they had received orders ‘not to accept a representation in this regard.’
Himanshu Borah, founder and president of the All India JEE-NEET Students Association, said on Twitter that “it’s a threat to democracy.”
Borah responded when India TV Digital contacted him, saying, “Students and parents went to the NTA office today to submit the representation, which included a copy of the petition and a court order. They stated that they are unable to accept the representation because they have been instructed by higher officials not to accept it in this regard.”
“Then one of the parents called us, and we spoke with the official,” Borah explained, adding that “the official told us that they cannot accept the representation for this matter.”
Himanshu further said they would approach the NTA on Friday too, with the representation.
JEE Mains – The petition against NTA’s notification
According to the petition, NTA decided in December 2020 to hold JEE Mains 2021 in four sessions for the benefit of the applicants, and the best of the scores for each applicant had to be finalised for admission to engineering courses across the country.
It was also argued that as late as March 15, 2022, it was notified that only two sessions would be held and scheduled in April and May 2022, i.e. only about 45 days before the scheduled exam, and that they would overlap/be close to various board exams.
Sumanth Nookala, an advocate, filed the petition.
JEE Mains – What the court’s order said
Taking the facts of the case into consideration, the court issued the following ruling:
“Petitioners are dissatisfied with the notification dated March 1, 2022 (amended on March 14, 2022) by which two sessions for JEE Mains 2022 were granted. The argument is that reducing the number of sessions from four to two would be difficult. We can allow the petitioners to submit representation to the competent authority for due consideration because the matter is in the policy domain. The petition has been dismissed.”
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