– Mita Mukherjee

Thousands of students aspiring to pursue engineering education in Bengal breathed a sigh of relief on Friday after the Supreme Court stayed a Calcutta High Court order that had directed the state joint entrance examination board to cancel its existing merit list of OBC candidates and prepare a fresh one based on pre -2010 list of OBC communities. The stay cleared the way for the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination Board to publish the long- delayed result of the 2025 joint entrance examinations for admission to undergraduate engineering courses in the state.

Soon after the announcement of the interim order of the top court, the state JEE board announced its decision to publish the results of the 2025 JEE examinations at 2 pm.on Friday itself.

The WBJEE results were originally scheduled to be published on August 7. The examinations were held on April 27. The publication of the results had been held up because the Calcutta High Court had directed the board to revise the merit list on the basis of an older OBC classification of 66 communities listed before 2010. The high court had also directed that seven percent OBC reservation be maintained.

The state government had challenged the decision before a division bench. But when the division bench refused to interfere with the single- judge ruling, the matter was taken to the Supreme Court.

The WBJEE results are usually published in late June and the counselling begins in mid-July.

A large number of students who wrote the JEE this time, have left Bengal and joined institutions in other states because of the long delay in publication of the JEE results, teachers of several engineering colleges alleged.

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