Students' activist claims NTA denied to accept representation made in regard with JEE Mains
Highlights
- JEE aspirants had earlier approached the court challenging the NTA's notification
- The petition in the Supreme Court was filed through Advocate Sumanth Nookala
- A group of students and activists today attempted to submit a representation in this regard to NTA
As the students' fight against the reduced sessions of JEE Mains and its dates clashing/overlapping with the board exams continues, there was a new development on Thursday as a group of students and activists claimed their representation was not accepted by the (NTA) National Testing Agency. Earlier, some JEE aspirants had approached the Supreme Court challenging the NTA's notice, in which it had reduced the sessions of JEE Mains 2022 from four to two.
In its Wednesday order, the Supreme Court had allowed IIT-JEE aspirants to submit a representation before the concerned authorities raising their grievances. A bench comprising Justices DY Chandrachud, Surya Kant and Bela Trivedi had said that the court cannot interfere with the policy decision of the authorities and thus granted the petitioners liberty to approach the authorities with their grievances.
JEE Mains 2022 - Screengrab of court order stating students can contact the concerned authorities
Going by the top court's order, several students and parents today prepared a representation and claimed they attempted to submit the same to the NTA. However, the NTA officially denied accepting the representation, saying they have received orders 'to not accept a representation in this regard', students claimed.
Student activist Himanshu Borah, founder and president of the All India JEE-NEET Students Association, took to Twitter and said "it's a threat to the democracy."
When India TV Digital contacted Borah, he said, "Students and parents today went to the NTA office to submit the representation with the petition copy and court order. They said they cannot accept the representation as they have been asked by the higher officials to not accept the representation in this regard."
"Then one of the parents made a phone call to us and we spoke with the official," Borah said, adding, "the official told us that they cannot accept the representation for this matter."
Himanshu further said they would approach the NTA on Friday too, with the representation.
JEE Mains - The petition against NTA's notification
In the petition, it was argued that for the applicant's benefits, NTA, in December 2020 had decided to conduct JEE Mains 2021 in four sessions and best of the score for each applicant had to be finalised for admission to engineering courses across the country.
It was also argued that shockingly, as late as March 15, 2022, it was notified that only two sessions would be held and scheduled in April and May 2022 i.e only about 45 days before the scheduled exam, that too overlapping/close proximity with various board exams.
The petition was filed through Advocate Sumanth Nookala.
JEE Mains - What the court's order said
Taking the case into account, the court gave the following order -
"Petitioners are aggrieved with the notification dated March 1, 2022 (amended on March 14, 2022) by which 2 sessions have been granted for JEE Mains 2022. The contention is that reduction from 4 sessions to 2 sessions would cause hardship. Since matter pertains to policy domain we can permit the petitioners to submit representation to competent authority for due consideration. Petition is disposed of."
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