96% candidates appear for JEE Advanced 2020 amid strict precautions

Amid the various challenges posed by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advanced 2020, the entrance test for admission to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), saw a 96 per cent turnout of aspirants on Sunday.

Organised by IIT Delhi this year, JEE (Advanced) 2020 was conducted in 222 cities, at 1001 exam centres all over the country. Last year, the test was held in 164 cities and at 600 examination centers.

While 160,831 candidates registered for the JEE Advanced after qualifying the JEE Main, the total number of registered candidates, who paid their registration fees, stood at 155,511.

While the first paper saw a turnout of 151,311, the second paper saw a turnout of 150,900 candidates. According to the organising institute, this year 97.94 per cent of the total registered candidates were allocated cities, in the top three chosen by them at the time of registration.

 

With all candidates having eight examination centres to choose from, the remaining candidates i.e. 2.06 per cent were allocated those examination cities, which fell under the eight choices they had made.

Moreover, JEE (Advanced) 2020 witnessed the largest number of nodes ever provided by TCS-iON for an exam in the country with roughly 340,000 nodes to accommodate everyone while complying with social distancing norms. The shortage of nodes in some regions resulted in allocation of examination cities beyond the top three choices and that too, only for a small number of the candidates.

"Due to Covid-19, conducting the exam was a major challenge. However, it was readily accomplished by IIT Delhi," said the members of the organizing team.

Prof V Ramgopal Rao, director, IIT Delhi, on behalf of the organising team, thanked Education Minister Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank', officials in the Ministry, the state governments, all the IITs and the candidates for their support in making the JEE Advanced 2020 a success.

In order to provide some degree of support to the candidates appearing for the JEE Advanced exam in the current pandemic situation, this year, IITs also offered candidates and an accompanying parent limited overnight accommodation at the campuses. For instance, IIT Gandhinagar offered JEE Advanced candidates, who had their centres in Gandhinagar/Ahmedabad region, an overnight stay at its campus.

 

Talking about this special arrangement, IIT Gandhinagar's Director Sudhir Jain said, "IITGN aspires to be a sensitive institution. Providing on-campus overnight accommodation to such candidates is our modest effort to give relief to some of the anxious candidates and their parents."

Different cities were allocated to candidates randomly, based on an advanced algorithm, in order to achieve the most efficient distribution. The algorithm takes note of the fact that these are challenging times because of Covid-19 and physical distancing needs to be maintained at each center to ensure the safety of candidates.

The organising institute, IIT Delhi, insisted that the city allocation for JEE (Advanced) 2020 was done in a fair manner.