No JEE Advance on 17 May 2020: The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) on Wednesday(01/03/2020) has decided to postpone the joint entrance exam advanced (JEE-Advanced) keeping in mind the current COVID-19 crisis.

The exam scheduled to be held on May 17 has been postponed and will be rescheduled after the JEE-Main entrance exam, which caters to over a million students- Statement released by the IIT Delhi, the organizing institute for JEE-Advanced 2020.

Eligible candidates get admission to undergraduate courses leading to a Bachelor’s, Integrated Master’s or Bachelor’s-Master’s Dual Degree in engineering, science or architecture in the 23 IITs (in India) through JEE-Advance. 

JEE is a two-tier exam system for entry into engineering colleges. While the JEE-Main results are used for admission to hundreds of engineering colleges across the country, IITs use it as a screening test and take the top 150,000 successful candidates to run another test called the JEE-Advanced for them.

On 18 March, the Centre had announced the postponement of the JEE-Main and the then ongoing Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) board exams for Classes X and XII, seeing the COVID-19 outbreak.
Among other top exams, the University Grant Commission’s national eligibility test (NET) for the selection of college professors, the entrance exam of the National Council for Hotel Management, entrance exams of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and Council for Scientific and Industrial Relations (CSIR) too have been rescheduled due to the coronavirus outbreak.
However, as per the statement released by the human resource development (HRD) ministry on Wednesday, more than 12 million students studying up to Class VIII under the CBSE will be automatically promoted to the next grade.
For Classes IX and XI, students will be promoted on the basis of their annual performance in the class.

“In view of the situation due to COVID-19, I have advised the CBSE to promote all students studying in Classes I to VIII to the next grade,” said HRD minister Ramesh Pokhriyal.

“Students studying in Classes IX and XI will be promoted to the next class/grade based on school assessments, including projects, periodic tests and term exams conducted so far,” he added.