Hello Aspirant,

No it is not necessary to be in top 2.5 Lakh rank holders but yes the cut-off percentile are decided in the way so that only around 2.5 Lakhs to 2.7 Lakhs candidates get eligible to sit for JEE-Advance. See the qualifying cut-off percentiles which needs to be cleared by any candidate to sit in JEE-Advance is released along with the final result of JEE-Main and for JEE-Main 2021 the final result will be released after all four attempts will be completed and the final result will be on the basis of your best score amongst different attempts. However basis on previous year's cut-off trends we can help you with the expected qualifying cut-offs for this year :-

• Common Rank List (CRL) - 90- 95 Percentile
• GEN-EWS - 70- 75 Percentile
• Other Backward Classes (OBC-NCL) - 70- 75 Percentile
• Scheduled Caste (SC) - 50- 55 Percentile
• Scheduled Tribe (ST) - 40- 45 Percentile
• PwD - 1-2 Percentile

Note that in above table it is not the actual cut-off for JEE-Main 2021 but expected on the basis of previous year's analysis. You can check out previous year's cut-off trends from the link given below :-

https://engineering.careers360.com/articles/jee-main-cutoff

I hope this information helps you.

Good Luck!!