The Human Resource Development ministry has put out a proposal to hold a common counselling for students successful in Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for engineering colleges, including the IITs.

Efforts are made to bring on board all technical institutions, especially the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and the IITs to hold a common counselling session for students successful in JEE from this year, top HRD ministry sources said.

The move is to stop students switching institutes offering better courses after taking admission.

Nearly 600 seats fell vacant in IITs and NITs last year, which, sources feel, is due to the practice of students holding two admissions and abandoning one of them.

The ministry wants a single all-India merit list of candidates who had taken both JEE-main and JEE-advance and conduct a common counselling this time.

“This will not let students secure seats in two different colleges at a time. As there will be no confusion over vacancy of seats then, all the seats will be filled by the eligible candidates,” official sources said.

The ministry’s attempt to introduce the system from 2013 was stopped by IIT Delhi’s serious objections to the proposal.

IIT-Kharagpur in charge

“Hopefully, we will have it from this year. The IIT-Kharagpur is in charge of holding the
test this time,” official sources said.

Despite common counselling, the nature of the entrance test across the country will remain the same.

“No change in the test format. The entrance test will be conducted in two parts, JEE-Main and JEE-Advance, in same format as was held last year,” sources added.

The JEE-Advance is conducted for admissions to IITs and Indian School of Mines while JEE-Main is held for admission to other technical institutes including NITs and engineering colleges which accepts the nationwide test scores for admitting students.

While the JEE Main is scheduled on May 25, JEE-Advance will take place on April 6 in pen and paper mode. JEE-main will be conducted in online mode on April 9, 11, 12 and 19.
Candidates aiming for admission in engineering colleges in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Odisha will too have to take JEE–Main as the three state governments have agreed to use the scores of the nationwide test from this year.