JEE Main 2024: What is the 75% eligibility criterion, which was waived off for three editions of JEE Main during the Covid pandemic?JEE Main 2024: The National Testing Agency this week started the registration process for the Joint Entrance Examinations (JEE) Main 2024 at the official website — jeemain.nta.ac.in. Candidates have time till November 30 to register for the engineering entrance exam.With the application details, the Agency also released the eligibility criteria for JEE Main 2024 aspirants.What is the 75% eligibility criterion?As per the official information brochure, candidates who qualify for admission in the NITs, IIITs and other CFTIs whose admissions are based on the JEE Main ranks, they should have secured at least 75 per cent marks in the Class 12 examination or be in the top 20 percentile in Class 12 examination conducted by respective Boards. For SC / ST candidates, the qualifying marks should be 65 per cent in the Class 12 examination.Candidates are also required to pass in each of the subjects of Class 12 / qualifying examination.The eligibility criterion was waived off in the previous three editions of the entrance held after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 but was restored for the 2023 batch.Why was it in the news last year?The 75 per cent eligibility criterion was surrounded with controversy last year. JEE Main 2023 candidates claimed that the eligibility criterion was restored with no prior intimation by NTA which caught candidates off guard and posed a problem for several repeaters.Aspirants claimed that those who failed to secure 75 per cent in the Class 12 exams, especially those for whom it was the last chance to appear for the entrance exams in 2023 were in the cold.Several JEE candidates, experts, and even some Members of Parliament (MPs), including Congress leader Karti P Chidambaram took to Twitter (now X) to raise their voices against this criterion, and requested the government to take back the restored eligibility criterion.After that, the Union Education Ministry announced another revision for the JEE Main 2023 eligibility criteria. The revised guidelines said apart from the All India Rank (AIR) of the candidate in JEE Main, a student should either have scored 75 per cent or above in the Class 12 board exam, or have appeared among the top 20 percentile candidates of the respective board exam result. However, candidates claimed that the eligibility criteria of the ‘top 20 percentile’ did not have uniformity as it varies from board to board.After several protests, letters to the government and court hearings, the eligibility criterion was not taken back and has been reinstated for JEE Main 2024 too.