The Committee of Eminent Persons (CEP) constituted by the IIT Council under the Chairmanship of Prof Ashok Misra submitted its report to the Government of India on 5th November 2015. The Committee made the following recommendations:
Major changes in the structure of JEE shall be effected from 2017 onwards:
A National Testing Service shall be set up by early 2016, mandated to conduct an Aptitude Test, which should test the scientific aptitude and innovative thinking ability. The Aptitude test may be offered 2 or more times in a year and would be an online test. The testing shall test the scientific thinking and cannot be gamed through coaching.
Based on this performance, about 4 lakh candidates shall be short-listed for taking the JEE.
The JEE itself will be on the lines of the current JEE (Advanced) and designed to test the knowledge in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics; and will be conducted by the IITs.
From this, ranks will be issued to 40,000+ students who can seek admission in IITs and NITs based on a common counselling.
The IITs be requested to set up a system for developing mock JEE examinations which will help students prepare for the JEE significantly and wean them away from the coaching industry. The possibility of using the MOOCS platform can also be explored.
MHRD may take measures for the improvement of school education and the method of examination of the Boards, so that students with the Science aptitude are well prepared in the concepts by the time they reach 12th grade, without dependence on coaching institutions.
Till such time, that is for 2016 and 2017, the practice of two tier JEE examination shall be continued.
The top 200,000 students from JEE (Main) shall be allowed to appear in JEE (Advanced).
More than 40,000 ranks will be issued in JEE (Advanced) for developing a better system for selection of candidates.
Joint counselling for IITs and NITs shall be continued as was done last year.
Board marks shall not to be counted for giving rankings this year for NITs, CFTIs etc.
The Government has decided to place the recommendations of the Report in the public domain for widespread consultation with the stakeholders.
Since this process would take some time, it was decided that the JEE 2016 shall be conducted in the same manner as 2015, with an enhanced intake from 1.5 lakh to two lakh into the JEE (Advanced) stage.
The weightage given to Board marks in JEE (Main) would continue for the year 2016.