New Delhi: Retracting from his stand about raising the cut-off percentage for appearing in the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) entrance exam, Union Minister for Human Resource Development (HRD) Kapil Sibal today said that scoring high would not be a prerequisite.

"Any reports indicating that students would need to score above 80 percent for appearing in the joint entrance exams are baseless," Sibal told reporters.

Sibal had on Monday stressed that the IIT admission procedures "should give more weightage to Class 12 exam marks," as well as consider raising the existing eligibility from 60 percent to 80 to 85 percent for students to appear in the IIT Joint Entrance Examination.

The minister made the comments while chairing a meeting of the IIT Council here.

The minister today said reports of an HRD Ministry proposal for a new system under which only high-scoring Class 12 students will be allowed to sit for the entrance exams to professional courses were baseless because only the IITs can decide admission criteria.

At the IIT Council meeting, the minister said he also wanted to get rid of professional coaching for medical and engineering exams. IANS