CBSE, NEET delays disrupt college admissions; EAPCET, KEAM timelines impacted

It started with blurred scans. Answer sheets that didn’t match handwriting. Missing pages. Marks that had no resemblance to what students remembered writing. When CBSE announced this year’s Class 12 results in May, the effects of its first large-scale On-Screen Marking (OSM) rollout came to light, with the repercussions continuing since then.

Over six weeks later, the fallout has spread far beyond CBSE’s own portals. College admissions across multiple states are stalled. IIT seats hang in limbo for students awaiting revaluation, falling short of the 75% JoSAA eligibility. The Kerala High Court froze an engineering rank list. Tamil Nadu went to AICTE for a deadline extension. Delhi University’s academic calendar is slipping, and more than 22 lakh medical aspirants are still waiting for NEET results from a re-exam — held on the very day CBSE released revaluation scores.

CBSE’s OSM gaffe, post-results portal disaster

The results declared by CBSE this year raise eyebrows as the national pass percentage fell to 85.20 per cent, the lowest in the last few years. Blurred scans made answer scripts illegible. Pages went missing. Answer sheets were mismatched with one student’s handwriting graded under another’s name.

The board acknowledged the scale of the problem. It rescanned 68,018 answer books and pulled around 13,000 for manual rechecking. IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur were drafted in as technical firefighters. A Parliamentary Panel also stepped in to audit the entire OSM process.

READ | ‘Not my CBSE sheet, it’s blurred’: OSM system faces backlash

The post-result process then misfired on its own. The verification and re-evaluation portal, originally scheduled to open May 29, was pushed to June 1. However, it crashed on June 1 and stayed down for a second consecutive day. CBSE extended the application deadline to June 7. The Supreme Court pulled up the board after a student based in Saudi Arabia petitioned that his admission process had been derailed. More than 3.8 lakh answer sheets sat in the processing queue. CBSE offered no public timeline for releasing outcomes.

The revaluation results finally arrived in the late hours of June 21, and only for 87% of the 1.6 lakh that had applied for rechecking.

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JoSAA counselling and the July 15 lifeline for IIT aspirants

The CBSE OSM mess landed directly inside JoSAA counselling. Thousands of students who cleared JEE Advanced but scored below the 75 per cent Class 12 aggregate, the threshold required for IIT eligibility, found their scores were casualties of faulty OSM scanning.

READ | ‘I scored 99 percentile in JEE Main but got below 75% in Class 12th’

IIT Roorkee, the organising institute for JEE Advanced 2026, confirmed that students awaiting CBSE revaluation results could still participate in all five rounds of JoSAA counselling, but must submit a revised marksheet meeting the 75 per cent criterion by July 15, 2026, for their seat to be confirmed.

AP EAPCET 2026 results, counselling schedule awaited

The delay in the declaration of the revised CBSE Class 12 results has reportedly deferred the announcement of the AP EAPCET 2026 results, with authorities deciding to wait so that CBSE students are not placed at a disadvantage during the admissions process.

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As per reports, around 8,000 CBSE students appeared for the AP EAPCET this year. Since many of them are awaiting the outcome of the CBSE re-evaluation process, the state government has decided that EAPCET ranks will be released only after the revised Class 12 results are declared. Therefore, the AP EAPCET 2026 results are now expected to be announced by the end of June.

KEAM locks up in Kerala

The late arrival of CBSE revaluation data set off the next collision. The KEAM 2026 rank list, due on June 22, was postponed after CBSE’s revaluation results arrived only in the late hours of June 21, leaving CBSE students no time to update revised marks on the portal.

A Kerala High Court case compounded the issue: students petitioned that the portal had been locked before they could submit improved scores. The Commissioner for Entrance Examinations deferred the rank list to June 26.

Since KEAM rank calculation weights both entrance scores and qualifying board marks, even small revisions in CBSE scores alter student rankings directly. The Centralised Admission Process and all subsequent counselling rounds will follow the delay.

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Tamil Nadu petitions AICTE over TNEA delays

In Tamil Nadu, state engineering admission authorities have sought a one-month extension from the All India Council for Technical Education. Their rank lists cannot be finalised without confirmed CBSE revaluation data. Their counselling schedule is in limbo.

Karnataka: KCET postponed, COMEDK extends

Karnataka saw its own cascade. The Karnataka Examinations Authority postponed KCET counselling, originally set for June 10, by three days after a delay in receiving the final seat matrix from the Higher Education Department. Option entry eventually opened on June 20, and for NEET students on June 22.

Separately, COMEDK, which governs admissions to over 150 private engineering colleges in Karnataka, extended its counselling registration deadline to June 12. Document verification for candidates runs until June 30, pushing the seat allotment rounds further into July.

NEET pushes medical admissions further away by weeks

Running parallel to all of this is the NEET UG 2026 issue. The exam, held on May 3 for over 22 lakh candidates, was cancelled by the National Testing Agency (NTA) after paper leak allegations emerged. The CBI is now handling the case. A re-exam was conducted on June 21. The provisional answer key was released on June 25, with scanned OMR sheets of candidates expected later in the week.

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With the answer key objection window and subsequent procedures ahead of announcing the final answer key, results for the NEET re-exam are expected in July. As a consequence, the Medical Counselling Committee’s Round 1 will now begin in August at the earliest, a two-month delay on the standard calendar.

State-level counselling for Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra will follow. AIIMS and JIPMER admissions are equally affected. The MBBS academic session for 2026-27, normally beginning around September 5, seems to be sliding.

What did students face this past month? A digital system went live seemingly without adequate stress-testing. An exam went ahead without adequate measures to secure it. Both are now compressing months of academic activity into a few frantic weeks, with students having no recourse except to wait.