A crucial meeting of the IIT Joint Admission Board (JAB), comprising heads of these premier institutes, will be held on August 25 amid speculation of relaxation in the eligibility criteria under the new format of entrance test.
During the meeting, JAB would review the just concluded IIT-JEE test and examine a proposal on whether to provide some relaxation in the top 20 percentile system which determines admission to the IITs, sources said.
According to the proposal, boards could have the flexibility to bring down the cut-off under the top 20 percentile to about 80 per cent if is over 85 to 90 per cent.
Aspiring students for IITs from Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu and from national boards such as CBSE had had to content with high cut-off, dashing their hopes of making it to these institutes.
The cut-off in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu were above 90 per cent this year.
According to sources, the proposal was discussed at a meeting between the some of the IIT directors when they called on HRD Minister M Pallam Raju here last week.
They said the selection of the 1.5 lakh candidates to sit for the JEE (Advance) could also be raised to two lakh if it finds a consensus.
Raju, in a letter to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy on August 5, had defended the new format of entrance test to IITs and NITs, saying it is "non-discriminatory" and has resulted in a "perceptible increase" in the number of girl students and those coming from rural areas compared to previous years.
