IIT-JEE Mains Technical Difficulties : Supreme Court Allows 15 Candidates To Attend Additional Session Tomorrow

The Supreme Court on Friday passed an order allowing 15 IIT aspirants, who faced technical difficulties during the first session of the ITT JEE-Mains 2022 exam held in June 2022, to attend the additional session of the exam held by the National Testing Agency tomorrow (July 30).

As per the information bulletin for the IIT-JEE Mains exam, the entrance test will be conducted in two sessions and the candidates have the option of attending either of the sessions. If a candidate appears in both the sessions, the best of the scores will be considered for the rank list.

Senior Advocate Gopal Shankaranarayanan, appearing for the petitioners before the Supreme Court, submitted before a bench comprising Justices DY Chandrachud and J B Pardiwala that they had appeared for the first session of IIT-JEE Mains held between June 23 to June 29, during which they faced several technical issues such as server problems, questions not loading, hidden timers and computer shut-downs, due to which they lost significant amount of time affecting their performance during the exam. The second session is held from July 25 to July 29.

Since there were widespread complaints regarding technical problems during the first session, the National Testing Agency decided to conduct an additional session on July 30 for those candidates who faced the difficulties.  Advocate Rupesh Kumar, the standing counsel for the NTA, told the bench that out of the 550 representations received, the agency found that 254 candidates faced genuine difficulties and they have been allowed to attend the additional session on July 30.

Mr. Kumar also stated that permitting all the students who had appeared in the first session to take the additional session on 30th July, 2022, would not be logistically feasible. Moreover, he argued that if candidates faced difficulties, they ought to have been more proactive and made representations to the NTA, like these 550 candidates. The Bench took note of the submissions regarding feasibility and that fact that candidates could have sent email communication to NTA regarding their grievances. 

Out of the 15 petitioners, 7 had given representations and 3 have been permitted to attend the additional session tomorrow, the NTA' s counsel told the Court.

 The bench decided to allow all the 15 petitioners to attend the additional session tomorrow and directed the NTA to issue them admit cards for such purpose. This will be subject to the condition that they will have to forego the results of the first session. With these directions, the writ petition was disposed of.

After dictating the order, Justice Chandrachud orally said that ideally all candidates who faced difficulties should be allowed to attend the additional session but considering the logistical problems, the bench has to confine the relief to the petitioners.

The plea has been filed through AOR Sumanth Nookala.

 Case Title : Gaurav Bhairava and others versus National Testing Agency and others | WP(c) No.556/2022 

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