19-05-2025
Students baffled as glitch delays JEE Advanced at Chandigarh University for an hour
Students appearing for Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advance at Block 3 of the Chandigarh University, Gharuan, faced an unexpected situation after their exam got delayed for one hour due to some technical glitch. Anxiety was already evident on the already tensed faces of the aspirants and their parents.
The disruption led to considerable stress among candidates and sparked criticism over the preparedness of private institutions entrusted with hosting such high-stakes exams.
The morning session of the JEE Advanced exam—conducted this year by IIT Kanpur—was scheduled to begin at 9 am. However, candidates at the affected centre reported that the exam started only around 10 am.
'There was no proper system in place. The biometric entry process began very late and the staff seemed unprepared to handle the volume of students,' said Bhupinder Singh, a parent. 'The lack of coordination caused unnecessary stress just before one of the most important exams of their lives,' he added.
Students said the delay significantly disrupted their mental focus. Many also complained that they were not properly informed about the reason for the delay as they waited anxiously to the exam to begin.
Further compounding the issue was the tight schedule between the two exam papers. Originally, the first session was to conclude at 12 noon, allowing students sufficient time to rest and have lunch before the second session at 2.30 pm. However, due to the delay, the paper 1 ended at 1 pm, leaving students little time to recover and prepare for the second session.
Parents voiced concerns and demanded accountability. 'This kind of mismanagement can have a lasting impact on a student's performance and morale,' said another parent. 'We are demanding that IIT Kanpur consider awarding grace marks or providing relief to students affected at this particular centre,' they added.
Supinder Sodhi, zonal operations manager at TCS, which conducted the exam, stated that a technical glitch in the system led to a one-hour delay for candidates in Block-3 of the university. However, he clarified that no candidate lost any exam time because of the delay. All candidates were given the full 180 minutes to complete the test. A total of 291 candidates were present at the centre, he added.
Around three thousand students appeared for exam in the tricity area, held at five designated centres, most of which were in Mohali.
The two compulsory back-to-back exams were conducted in online mode. The students seeking admission to undergraduate engineering courses at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian institute of Sciences (IISCs) as well as some other prestigious Research based colleges appear in these exams.
Kunal Singh who runs a coaching centre in Chandigarh said 'Based on Student feedback, I think paper 2 was actually tougher as well as lengthy than paper 1 due to the increased complexity emphasizing in-depth understanding, more weightage on decimal answer type questions instead of MCQs and length of questions in Physics and Mathematics.'
He added that as seen usually, the physics part was the toughest out of all the three subjects with conceptually dense and time-consuming problems. Chemistry was more focused on organic chemistry. Overall any candidate who may have attempted 45% of the questions correctly will score well enough to cross the cutoff, Singh said.
The Results of JEE Advanced will be declared on June 2.
