10/12/2020
THE "WRONG KEY"
For the last several days, various newspapers/media have been reporting that one student (an orphan to be precise and our fullest sympathy to him) accidentally pressed a 'wrong key' during the IIT admission process and he was denied his seat at/by IIT Bombay. I have received several emails on 'how could IITB do it'? Unfortunately, these news/media personnel did not even bother to talk to the IIT system/IIT Delhi to find out what is this 'wrong key' that they are talking about. I also understand that a large number of the readers may not be the familiar with the IIT+NIT admission-cum-seat allotment process. Let me try to explain the details so that you understand that IITB had nothing to do with this!
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No individual IIT or NIT has any role to admit the students through the JEE Main and Advanced exams. The office of JoSAA, which happened to be headed by IIT Delhi for the 2020 admission (IIT Kharagpur will head JoSAA 2021), manages all admissions and IITB had no role WHATSOEVER in the admission or ejection of anyone. Further, pl note that it is not like an accidental pressing of an eject button in the interface – there is a pop-up window clearly explaining what would happen if you choose to withdraw and, further, there is both OTP and profile password based verifications required by the student to confirm. Pl check the JoSAA website at IIT Delhi for details. Pl note that India is a resource constrained country and we do not have the freedom to select/deselect/re-admit anyone based on our individual judgements, lest it gets misused!
I now provide the exact set of steps required to withdraw:
a. A candidate has to log in with his username and password
b. Selects the withdraw option on the candidate portal.
c. The candidate is then shown the details of the seat allotted and asked to fill in the reasons for withdrawal.
d. The candidate then has to click to accept an agreement on the web portal, stating that “I would like to withdraw from the seat allocation process of JoSAA 2020 and I understand that I will not be considered in the subsequent rounds of seat allocation for JoSAA 2020.”
e. Press “Submit” button.
f. Once "submitted", the candidate still cannot withdraw from the process. Now the system shows a pop-up message “After withdrawal, the allotted seat, if any, will be cancelled and candidate will not be allowed for further rounds of counselling.”
g. The system then asks the candidate to again enter his unique password and
h. A One Time Password (OTP) is the sent to his/her registered mobile number.
Once the OTP is pressed, the seat is then released to the next available candidate. Pl note that there are more than 800 applicants (not just one you hear) who have withdrawn during JEE (Adv) 2020 seat allotment as those applicants might have preferred a seat somewhere outside the IIT/NIT system.
I hope that you all understand the actual process and the newspapers will correct their 'wrong key' story. Kindly do share with your friends who might have been misled by the newspaper story. We also state that whatever the Hon'ble Supreme Court decides, we shall follow the order in letter and spirit.
Here is a screen shot of the final stage of withdrawal from JoSAA.
