Discrepancy hits IIT admission process

About 80 IIT aspirants failed to get admission to the prestigious institutes in the just concluded admission process due to the differing calculations between the state boards and the IITs in arriving at the top 20 percentile of successful candidates.
HRD Minister M M Pallam Raju, who met IIT Delhi director R K Shevgaonkar, disclosed about this discrepancy and a likely reason which could have deprived students from taking admissions to the IITs despite good ranks.
Talking to reporters, he said some states which included Andhra Pradesh could have made calculations inconsistent with the one adopted by the IITs.
According to him, "the top 20 percentile was calculated by

these state boards based on the number of students who appeared in the class XII board examinations, while it should have been the total number of students who passed the exam."
Admission to 16 IITs, under the new format, is based performance in JEE (Advanced). Students who have done well should also be among the top 20 percentile of successful candidates in class XII examination conducted by various school boards.

Raju, however, did not elaborate when asked for the reason for the differing calculations.
When asked if the affected students would get reprieve, he said, "We will see, will look into how many have got affected and on what basis."

Report suggests that 79 students have been hit.
However, he said he is waiting for more clarifications on the matter and intends to hold a couple of more meetings on the admission process which would also include the system of normalisation of marks.
Asked if his ministry was considering to revert back to the old system of admission, Raju remarked that "the present system was adopted as per the wisdom of the IIT council and it's for them to see what is fare and what is not.