The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati had listed out five Dos and Don’ts that candidates appearing for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advanced to be held on May 22, 2016, must follow. One of the instruction said that students will not be allowed to wear watches in the examination centre.

On May 15, IIT-G revised its earlier instructions and announced that candidates will be allowed to carry simple analog watches in the examination hall. However, the candidates should note that smart/programmable or digital watches cannot be carried along to the examination hall. Prof KV Krishna, Chairman, JEE Advanced 2016, said, “We had received requests from students to allow watches in the examination hall, following which we reviewed it and allowed only the analog ones.”

Students asked the authorities to grant them permission to wear watches to the examination centre as they didn’t want to be distracted by asking time from invigilators and concentrate on answering the paper. Students are requested to carry analog watches as there is not a 100% surety if the examination centres will have wall clocks. Prof Krishna added, “Arranging and making sure there is a wall clock in every room of the examination centres is a bit complicated. It would not be 100% possible.”

The seven zonal IITs will conduct JEE Advanced with IIT-G as the organising institute.