Indore (Madhya Pradesh): The wait for the JEE Main 2026 Session 1 results reached a fever pitch today as the National Testing Agency (NTA) released the final answer key, confirming that nine questions have been officially dropped from the evaluation.
For thousands of students in Indore’s coaching hubs of Bhawarkua and Geeta Bhawan, the news brings a mix of relief and renewed strategy.
The decision follows a high-stakes objection period where experts and students flagged discrepancies in the provisional key.
JEE mentor Atil Arora, who had been vocal about the errors, noted that the corrections were necessary for a fair playing field.
“The discrepancies were significant, particularly in the Physics section where language ambiguity led to multiple interpretations,” Arora stated. He had previously advised students to challenge the key, emphasising that “every single mark can shift a student’s rank by hundreds in a competitive zone like Indore.”
According to the official final key, seven of the dropped questions were from Physics and two from Mathematics, while the Chemistry section remained largely unscathed.
Notable disputes included a Wave Optics question from the January 22 evening shift and a Thermodynamics problem from January 24.
“I was stressed about the Wave Optics question for days,” said Rahul Verma, a JEE aspirant from an Indore-based coaching institute. “Knowing it’s been dropped feels like a weight has been lifted because now we all get those four marks.”
Under NTA guidelines, when a question is dropped, all candidates who appeared in that specific shift receive a full +4 bonus, regardless of whether they attempted the question. This “bonus boost” is expected to s
lightly push the raw scores required for top percentiles.
As the result portal at jeemain.nta.nic.in goes live, local educators are urging students to look beyond today’s numbers. “The bonus marks are a win for accuracy, but the focus must now shift to Session 2,” added another local expert Jaiveer Singh.
With the Session 2 registration window still open, Indore’s student community is already preparing for the final hurdle in April, added Ashlesha Phadnis, mentor.
'Dropped Question' List
The following question IDs have been removed from the final score calculation:
• Jan 22 (Shift 1): Physics ID 444792191
• Jan 22 (Shift 2): Physics IDs 8606541010, 8606541017; Maths ID 860654995
• Jan 23 (Shift 1): Physics ID 8606541395
• Jan 23 (Shift 2): Physics IDs 444792476, 444792479
• Jan 24 (Shift 2): Physics ID 444792647
• Jan 28 (Shift 1): Maths ID 444792698
Why the questions were dropped?
According to mentors, several questions across different shifts and subjects contain ambiguous or incorrect answers, prompting demands for bonus marks. The disputed questions are as follows:
January 21 (Morning Shift):
Chemistry – Thermodynamics
January 22 (Evening Shift):
Physics – Wave Optics
January 23 (Morning Shift):
Chemistry – Halogen Derivatives
January 23 (Evening Shift):
Physics – Newton’s Laws of Motion (NLM) and Error & Measurement
January 24 (Evening Shift):
Physics – Kinetic Theory of Gases (KTG) and Thermodynamics
Mathematics – Vectors
January 28 (Morning Shift):
Physics – Nuclear Physics
January 28 (Evening Shift):
Chemistry – Electrochemistry
A question is typically removed from the evaluation process for one of four primary reasons:
Ambiguous Framing: The wording of the question was found to be mathematically or linguistically confusing, leading to multiple logical interpretations.
Missing or Incorrect Options: In several Physics problems, experts found that the correct calculated value was not among the four options provided.
Data Inconsistency: Certain questions - specifically in Thermodynamics and Nuclear Physics - contained contradictory data points that made a single correct solution impossible.
Technical Errors: Discrepancies between the English and Hindi translations of the paper, where a change in a single unit or term led to different answers.
