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New Delhi, Aug. 6: Students who take the IIT entrance exam next year may get to learn the right answers hours later on the same day as part of a move to make the system more transparent.
IIT-Joint Entrance Examination chairman G.B. Reddy has recently disclosed this to Delhi High Court.
Reddy said the Joint Admission Board, which will decide the modalities of the JEE Advanced — Round II of the two-step JEE — would consider announcing the answer keys on the day of the test. The answer keys refer to the correct answer from the four choices given against any question.
Alternatively, the Joint Admission Board might choose to release the answer keys a week later after getting them vetted by experts, JEE sources said.
JEE authorities now announce the answer keys after about a month. This year, they did so in the first week of May after the test was held on April 8.
Reddy filed his affidavit later last month in response to a petition by Rajiv Kumar, an IIT Kharagpur teacher who has highlighted several anomalies in the IIT-JEE and suggested ways to make it more transparent.
Kumar’s petition has sought the declaration of provisional answer keys, preferably on the day of the examination, to allow the public to send feedback. After scrutinising the feedbacks and vetting the answers, he says, the answer keys should be frozen for evaluation.
“The suggestion (by Kumar) shall be placed before the next organising committee for their consideration,” Reddy’s affidavit said.
JEE sources said the answer keys are provided by the paper setters along with the questions, so it’s possible to make them public the day of the test. However, the JEE authorities now get the answers vetted by independent experts before announcing the answer keys.
“We invite experts on the subjects (on which the test is held) to figure out the answers. Their answers are matched with the answer keys provided by the paper setters. After proper vetting, the correct answer keys are released. It takes time,” a JEE source said.
“To ensure accuracy, the vetting can be done within a week and the correct answers made public. The Joint Admission Board will take the final decision.”
From next year, the JEE will have two parts: JEE Main and JEE Advanced. Admission to all centrally funded technology institutes apart from the IITs — such as the NITs — will be decided through the JEE Main.
The IITs, however, will conduct the JEE Advanced to select their students from a pool of 1.5 lakh candidates screened on the basis of their JEE Main performance. The IIT Bombay senate has asked that the number of students allowed to take the JEE Advanced be slashed to about 50,000.
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