On tech track

Mumbai, May 30 (PTI): Achin Bansal from Punjab topped this year’s All-India Joint Entrance Examinations (JEE) conducted by the Indian institutes of technology.

Ankita Sharma from Mumbai was the topper among girls.

The Mumbai zone had the highest number of qualifiers with 2,235 students clearing the test, followed by the Delhi zone with 1,398. Pandalai, the chairman of IIT-JEE 2007, and J.M. Vasi, the deputy director of IIT Mumbai, made the announcement today.

The total number of students who took the exam was 2,43,029, of whom 7,209 are eligible to seek admission to 5,537 seats in IITs at Mumbai, Delhi, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Chennai and Roorkee, IT-BHU Varanasi and Ismu in Dhanbad, they said.

Bansal, from Kot Kapura town in Punjab, is the son of a medical practitioner. He said he wanted to study computer science in IIT Mumbai.

This year, 54,025 girls wrote the JEE and 587 qualified, with Sharma from Mumbai’s Anushakti Nagar topping the list. Her all-India rank is 55.

The daughter of a Nuclear Power Corporation of India official, Sharma said she had not yet decided about the course she wanted to pursue.

Asked about the 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes, Pandalai said that according to Supreme Court directives, the quota would not be implemented this year, although around 17 to 18 per cent seats were reserved for students from this category.

IITs admit Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe students with relaxed criteria. This year, 20,892 SC candidates appeared for the JEE, of whom 594 qualified. Of the 5,909 ST candidates who wrote the exam, 109 cleared it.

Anasuya Mandal, who topped among SC candidates, ranked 449 in the common merit list, while Varunie Shashni came first in the ST category and ranked 983 in the common merit list, the IIT-JEE chairman said.

Candidates with certified physical disabilities are also granted admission with relaxed norms. Fifteen such students qualified this year.

For candidates with a reading disability, enlarged question papers were provided.

The counselling session for all the qualified students will take place between June 18 and 22.

IITs have also put out an extended merit list. Students on this list may also be counselled by the Indian Institute of Space Science, Thiruvananthapuram, and the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research at Calcutta, Pune and Mohali.

The directorate-general of shipping also offers admission based on JEE results.

“Since we changed the exam paper pattern this year and it was more simplified, we have lots of students from the state boards, including the topper,” Pandalai said.

Asked about the examination papers for next year, he said: “We have to study the entire process before talking about next year’s papers. By making papers easier, a chance is given to students who do not go to coaching classes.”

He added that compared to last year, 193 more girls have cleared the test this time. “We provided girls with admission forms at half the price.”