The Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal, on the evening of the 16th of December, announced the schedule of the Joint Entrance Examination (Main) 2021.
The Engineering entrance exam would be conducted 4 times in a year, February, March, April and May.
Mr. Pokhriyal said, “In the first attempt, the students will get a first-hand experience of taking an examination and will know their mistakes which they can improve in the next attempt. Additionally, this will reduce the chances of dropping a year and droppers would not have to waste a full year.”
The first batch of exams would be held between the 23rd of February and the 26th of February.
In the new paper pattern introduced, candidates have to attempt 75 questions out of 90 or 25 out of questions 30 in each section of Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics.
In this academic year, there would be no negative marking in the 15 optional questions and best of four scores will be considered.
The examination agency decided to conduct the exam in 13 languages, which is English, Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Malayalam, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.
Exams in Hindi, English, and Urdu would be held across India and other regional language papers would be held in the respective states.
In addition, the National Test Agency (NTA) decided to provide choice in the question papers. In regard to this, there would be two sections in each paper.
The decision is aimed at giving students multiple opportunities to improve their scores in the examination if they fail to give their best in the first attempt without wasting a whole academic year.
The aforementioned changes were introduced by the NTA after a recent live interaction with students and teachers on the 10th of December.
