The Joint Entrance Exam or JEE Main 2021 will be held from February 23 to 26, Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal announced on Wednesday. In the next academic year, the JEE Main will be conducted in multiple sessions — February, March, April and May 2021.

Multiple sessions will help students to improve on their mistakes, the minister said. Even if a student appears in all four sessions, his/her best marks out of the four exams will be considered for the result, he added.

“This JEE Main exam will be largest in the world of its kind,” Pokhriyal said in his live interaction on Twitter.

In a first, JEE Main 2021 will be held in 13 languages — English, Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Malayalam, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. The minister stressed that exams in regional languages will help students better prepare for the tests in their native tongues.

The Education Minister also announced that in the new paper pattern, there will be no negative marking in the 15 alternative questions. The candidates have to attempt 75 questions out of 90, or 25 questions out of 30 in each section of Chemistry, Physics and Maths.

“National Testing Agency has decided that there’ll be 90 questions, candidates will have to solve any 75 out of them. In the remaining 15 optional questions, even negative marking won’t be done. Merit list/ranking will be prepared based on the best score of the candidate,” Pokhriyal was quoted as saying by ANI.

JEE Main 2021 application form will be available at the National Testing Agency’s JEE Main website jeemain.nta.nic.in. Candidates are advised to keep a track of all updates regarding the entrance exam there. The instructions to apply and complete the application process will also be available on the JEE Main website.

On December 15, the National Testing Agency released a JEE Main 2021 notification at jeemain.nta.nic.in which was removed a few hours later. The announcement saying registrations were to begin on December 15 and the first session scheduled from February 22 to 25 was removed as well. Later, the Education Ministry released a statement saying there has been “no decision on dates yet”.

About JEE (Main) 2021

The Joint Entrance Examination (JEE Main) comprises of two papers. Paper 1 is conducted for admission to Undergraduate Engineering Programs (B.E/B. Tech) at NITs, IIITs, other Centrally Funded Technical Institutions (CFTIs), Institutions/Universities funded/recognized by participating State Governments, as well as an eligibility test for JEE (Advanced), which is conducted for admission to IITs. Paper 2 is conducted for admission to B. Arch and B. Planning courses in the country.