JEE Main 2021 to be Held Four Times, 1st Round Between 23-26 Feb

Dr Pokhriyal said that conducting JEE Main 2021 four times will help students improve scores. 

(Photo: The Quint)

The first session of JEE Main 2021 will be held between 23 to 26 February, followed by the next three sessions in March, April and May, Union Minister of Education Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal said on Wednesday, 16 December.

Dr Pokhriyal said that conducting the engineering entrance exam four times a year will help students improve their scores.

“Four sessions will help students to improve their scores as they can learn from the mistakes made in previous attempts. Students who are unable to appear for one of the sessions can prepare and appear for the next.”

Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal, Union minister of Education.

He said that the move would also help students, whose areas could witness a surge in COVID-19, as they could appear in the next set of exams.

Is it compulsory to appear for all four sessions?

No, Dr Pokhriyal has clarified that a candidate appearing for JEE Main 2021 may appear for either one, two, three or all four sessions. This means that it is not compulsory to attend all four rounds, he said.

Further, the minister said that while declaring results, the National Testing Agency would consider the best score that a candidate has obtained.

For instance, if a candidate has appeared for exams in February, March and April and scored the best in the March paper, then the NTA would consider her March attempt as final result.

Can I write JEE Main in my mother tongue?

The minister also said that apart from English, Hindi and Gujarati, students can also write the engineering entrance test in Assamese, Bengali, Kannada, Marathi, Malayalam, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

What happened to dates that were reportedly declared earlier?

The announcement comes after reports pointed out that the National Testing Agency, which is in charge of conducting JEE Main and other entrance examinations, had pulled down a bulletin of information on JEE Main 2021, after uploading it on the JEE portal on Tuesday, 15 December.

According to that purported bulletin, JEE Main was to be conducted between 22 to 25 February. However, the Minister has now clarified that the exam will be held between 23 to 26 February, 2021.

JEE Main is a qualifying examination that is generally held twice in a year for admissions to undergraduate engineering courses in NITs, IIITs and other Centrally-Funded Technical Institutes. It is also the screening examination for JEE Advanced, which is written by those seeking admission to IITs.