NEW DELHI: The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have proposed a change in admission criteria barely two years after the premier engineering schools adopted a new format at the behest of Kapil Sibal , then human resource development minister under the previous UPA government The IITs are in favour of tweaking the requirement that candidates have to be in the top 20 percentile in their Class XII exams in order to be eligible for admission, amid criticism that the condition is shutting many deserving candidates out. The Joint Admission Board JAB ) of the IITs — comprising heads of the institutions — met last week in Mumbai and proposed to accommodate such candidates who have been rejected despite cracking the entrance test. The proposal suggests according some weightage to a candidate’s aggregate marks in board exams. ET spoke to two IIT directors who confirmed this on condition of anonymity.The JAB proposal will be discussed at the meeting of the IIT Council — the highest decision-making body of the 16 engineering schools — on September 22, which will also be attended by Smriti Irani, Sibal’s successor as HRD minister . If approved, though, the change won’t be applied retrospectively. Currently, candidates are admitted to the 16 IITs based on their performance in the Joint Entrance Exam or JEE (Advanced) besides which they have to be in the top 20 percentile in Class XII.The second condition has often been criticised for leading to a peculiar predicament that students of school boards that are more generous with marks find themselves facing. Students from Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala are usually regarded as the worst hit as the top 20 percentile cut-off for their state boards usually hovers around, or is above, 90 per cent. In 2013, which was the first year of the new eligibility criteria, an Andhra Pradesh student with 91.1 per cent could not get admission to the civil engineering course at IIT Bombay because the top 20 percentile cut-off mark for the state board exam was 91.8 per cent. According to an IIT director , about 240 aspirants could not gain entry into IIT this year despite securing an impressive all-India rank in JEE (Advanced) as they fell short of the percentile condition."Such candidates are small in number. They usually make up just 2.5 per cent of those who have cracked the entrance test. It’s unfortunate that some cannot get in even though they have scored above 80 per cent in their board examination,” an IIT director told ET on condition of anonymity. “We feel that there should be an additional criterion for such candidates. It could be a formula which gives weightage to both aggregate board marks and the top 20 percentile cut-off. We will only finalise it once the IIT Council takes a view on this proposal.”The percentile criterion was introduced in 2013 at the behest of Sibal so that students would pay greater attention to their performance in school, thus gaining an allround education rather than merely focusing on entrance exams. It was also targeted at the cram schools that thrive thanks to the relentless striving for acceptance at India’s top institutes. There could be some opposition to the attempt to undo the earlier change.“We understand that there could be some resistance to this move, if approved by the (IIT) Council,” said another IIT director. “But we have discussed the issue threadbare, which is why we have proposed to introduce an additional or a sub-criterion which could be a combination of top 20 percentile condition and absolute marks scored in the board exams.”