IIT Bombay
Campus of Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. [Representational Image]Creative Commons/JanPhilipp

With the number of seats reserved for Scheduled Tribe (ST) students failing to hit the maximum limit, Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) on Friday revised the qualifying marks for ST category in the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE), conducted every year for admissions into the tech colleges.

Students belonging to the ST category are now required to score 124 (24.5 percent) out of 504 to qualify for admission to the IITs, compared to aggregate marks of 177 (35 percent) earlier. The cut-off percentage for each subject has also been reduced to 7 percent from 10 percent.

"There weren't enough ST students who had qualified. Although we now have more ST students than seats, not everyone may take admission. They may not be happy with the IIT or the stream," a JEE chairman told The Economic Times.

IITs have reduced the qualifying marks for all the categories. The minimum percentage of marks required for students in the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category is 6.30 percent and for SC and ST candidates, it is 3.5 percent.

The minimum cut-off score has been revised down to 30 percent for the first time since the Joint Entrance Exam was made as a "two-tier" qualifying test.

Students, who attain the minimum qualifying marks in the aggregate cut-off list as well as the subject-wise cut-off, will appear in the rank list.

The institutes have decided to reduce the qualifying marks after assessing the performance of the candidates. The engineering colleges had announced a "higher cut-off" on 3 June. The IITs will announce the rank list on 25 June.