The National Testing Agency (NTA) has released the provisional answer keys of the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE Main 2021) February session on its official website - jeemain.nta.nic.in. All those candidates who have appeared for the JEE Main exam between February 23 and February 26 can their responses against the answer key from the official website. To download JEE Main answer keys, students will be required to log in using their credentials.

“The National Testing Agency has uploaded the provisional answer keys along with the question paper with recorded responses on the JEE Main website jeemain.nta.nic.in for candidates to challenge,” NTA notification read.

The JEE Main 2021 February session was held from February 22 to 26. Over 6.6 lakh had registered for the BTech papers of whom 95 percent appeared in the examination.

Major Points:

1. NTA has allowed students who are unsatisfied with the answer key to raise objections. “The candidates, who are not satisfied with the answer key, may challenge the same by paying a fee of Rs 200 per question challenged as a non-refundable processing fee. This facility is available from March 1 to March 3 (upto 5 pm),” NTA said. The payment of the processing fee can be made through, debit/credit card/net banking/Paytm till March 3 (upto 6 pm). No challenge will be entertained without receipt of the processing fee.
2. NTA subject experts will scrutinise the challenges and changes will be made if there is any requirement. Once all the challenges have been submitted and verified by the exam authority, a final JEE answer key will be released at the official site of NTA JEE. The JEE result for the first session of the entrance examination will be announced on the basis of the final answer key. “Challenges made by the candidates will be verified by the panel of subject experts. If found correct, the answer key will be revised accordingly. Based on the revised final answer key, the result will be prepared and declared. No individual candidate will be informed about the acceptance/non-acceptance of his/her challenge. The key finalized by the Experts after the challenge will be final,” NTA added.
3. JEE Main Paper 1 was held for a total of 90 questions, 25 each from Physics, Chemistry, and Maths. Candidates had to attempt only 75 questions. Each subject had 20 MCQs and 10 numerical questions, and five out of 10 numerical questions were optional. JEE Main 2021 for Paper 1 (BE/BTech) was conducted for 300 marks, while Paper 2 (B.Arch/B.Plan) was held separately for 400 marks each.
4. As per JEE Main 2021 marking scheme, for MCQs- four marks will be awarded for every correct answer and one mark will be deducted for every incorrect answer, while for the answer with a numeric value- four marks will be awarded for every correct answer and 0 marks will be deducted for every incorrect answer.
5. The percentile score of a candidate is calculated as follows: (100 X Number of candidates who appeared in the session with a raw score equal to or less than the candidate)/a total number of the candidates appearing in the session. Percentile scores are scores based on the relative performance of all those who appear for the examination. Basically, the marks obtained are transformed into a scale ranging from 100 to 0 for each session of examinees. The percentile score will be the normalised score for the examination (instead of the raw marks received by the candidate) and shall be used for the preparation of final merit lists. The percentile scores will be calculated up to seven decimal places to avoid bunching effects and reduce ties.