The Supreme Court on Friday decided to put admissions to engineering institutes on hold over a dispute on awarding bonus marks in the joint entrance examination (JEE).

The order follows the petition filed by two IITM (Indian Institute of Technology, Madras) candidates who claimed that their admission had been affected due to the award of bonus marks and sought a revised list without bonus marks.

This will affect about 33,000 students, but the SC said it had to be sorted out first.

The IITM however said it was not possible to re-evaluate the roughly 2.5 lakh answer sheets and added that bonus marks would settle any disputes in admission.

The SC has asked the institute to present all the pending petitions before the high court regarding the JEE 2017 rank list, while also restraining high courts from entertaining further petitions.