(This story originally appeared in on Jun 13, 2015)

MUMBAI: A shortfall in the count of Scheduled Tribe (ST) students has forced the Indian Institutes of Technology to re-engineer the qualifying score for joining the tech colleges.The aggregate marks are down from 177 (35%) to 124 (24.5%) of 504. The cut-offs for each subject have been revised from 10% to 7%.Downsizing of qualifying marks has taken place across the board. The minimum percentage of marks in each subject is 6.30 for OBC students and 3.5 for SC and ST candidates.For the first time since the Joint Entrance Exam was redesigned as a twotier qualifying test, the minimum cut-off score has been reduced by 30%. Only those students who score the minimum required marks for both -aggregate cut-off list and subject-wise cut-off -will make it to the rank list.The IITs have now managed to push in a few more ST candidates than the seats reserved for them. “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,“ said a JEE chairman.On June 3, the tech schools had declared a higher cut-off. On Friday evening, the downgrade took place after compiling candidates' performance.Last week, the IITs uploaded ORS answer booklet copies and 150 candidates challenged their scores. On Saturday , the IITs will upload fresh scores and declare the result on June 25.