New academic session of NITs and IITs to start in September

The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted almost every sphere of human life in majority of countries across the world. India and its education sector is no exception. Amidst such an unpredictable time, the students who are aspiring to enter India’s top engineering institutions IITs and NITs are left with uncertainties as JEE Main and JEE Advance exams have been rescheduled. The exams were earlier scheduled to be held in April and May respectively.

As per the recent report, the Organising Chairman of JEE Advanced 2020, Siddharth Pandey, while commenting on the situation recently said, “As the Advanced exam is contingent on JEE Main, it will require a budder period of 2-3 weeks to conduct JE Advanced post the results are declared. We are trying to conclude JEE Main during June 20-22 and the advanced exam will tentatively be conducted on July 12.”

Apart form exams, the other major problem is that the institutions have not prepared their academic calendars for the upcoming sessions. Another challenge is the seat allocation and concussing process that begins post the release of the complied list of ranks as the aspirants who appeared in January 2019 JEE Main are also waiting for final ranks.

While speaking on the precautions that institutes are mandated to follow in relation to foreign students admissions, Director of the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Warangal, NV Ramana Rao, said, “Foreign students have been asked to arrive a month early to complete their quarantine period before joining the institutes. Students will be asked to follow social distancing even when the situation normalises. The batch sizes will be the same but the class sizes will be reduced.”

Chairperson of the Central Seat Allocation Board (CSAB), Rajeev Tripathi, said that the board is working on if they can eliminate physical counselling where students are asked to present physically with the required documents. He stated that the board is planning to opt for an online verification of the documents as to avoid the mass gathering of the students at the respective centres.