Sibal backtracks, says IIT-JEE not under govt

New Delhi, Oct 20: Barely a day after proposing new changes to the eligibility criteria for the IIT entrance exam, Kapil Sibal backtracked saying that it was out of government's jurisdiction to make any changes to the IIT-JEE exam pattern.

The HRD Minister on Tuesday, Oct 20 clarified that any change the eligibility criteria to appear in IIT-JEE exam will have to be taken by an IIT committee, and dubbed the media reports suggesting that he would be fixing the marks for the entrance to IITs as 'baseless'.

"The government of India has no role to play and any report which suggests that there is a proposal to allow only those who obtain 80 per cent marks in their class 12 examination to sit for JEE is baseless," he said.

This comes after there were reports that Sibal was considering rising the cut off percentage from 60pc to about 80 pc in the Class 12 exams for candidates intending to take the entrance test for the prestigious institutes after a meeting of the IIT Council on Monday, Oct 19.

This also invited a strong reaction from the Bihar Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar who on Tuesday, Oct 20 said that the new criterion proposed by the HRD minister was discriminatory against the students with poor socio-economic status.

OneIndia News