Bonus marks: SC stays entry to IITs, govt engg colleges
|
AmitAnand Choudhary
|
|
New Delhi
|
The Supreme Court stayed on
Friday the ongoing counselling and admission process in IITs, NITs and
IIITs, besides government-funded engineering colleges, questioning the
validity of the decision to award 18 bonus marks to all students for
wrong and vague questions in the joint entrance examination (advanced)
paper. The court's decision comes even though 33,000 candidates have
already taken admission so far this year.
Ahead of the next
counselling session, scheduled to start from Monday , a bench of
Justices Dipak Misra and A M Khanwilkar restrained all engineering
colleges from inducting students till it adjudicates on the controversy
over the awarding of bonus marks.
The bench is examining the decision of IITs to award 18 bonus marks to
all candidates irrespective of whether a candidate attempted these
questions. The bench said SC had held in 2005 that bonus marks for wrong
questions could be given only to students who attempted the question.
The bench agreed to ex amine the plea of two students who challenged the
IITs' decision. The bench also restrained high courts from entertaining
any petition on the issue and posted the case to July 10 to pass an
order after examining all options.
“It is a problem and it has to be solved at the earliest...We will think about the solution but don't create further confusion by giving admission,“ the bench said.
Attorney general K K Venugopal, appearing for the IITs, ruled out re-evaluation of answer papers saying it was not possible as 2.5 lakh students had taken the examination. He said two wrong questions were there in only one of the 10 sets of question papers which were in Hindi and it was impossible to find students who opted to take the entrance examination in Hindi. He said there were only two practical options available -either to continue with the bonus marks or strike out the wrong questions.
“We do not know who took the test in Hindi. It is very difficult to find out and that is why it was decided that bonus marks be given to all students. Till date, more than 33,000 candidates have already taken admission and the whole process would have to be started afresh if the merit list is revised,“ Venugopal said.
“It is respectfully submit ted that the relief is entirely against equity since the process of seat allocation is going on and around 33,000 candidates have already accepted the allotted seat and reported for physical verification of the documents... It is submitted that in case the ongoing counselling and admission process is disturbed then the admission procedure of more than 36,000 students in 97 institutes under the joint seat allocation programme for IITs, NITs, IIITs and GFTIs (governmentfunded technical institutions) would be scrapped,“ the IITs said in their affidavit.
The bench, however, said that the apex court's earlier order on the issue could not be overlooked.
“It is a problem and it has to be solved at the earliest...We will think about the solution but don't create further confusion by giving admission,“ the bench said.
Attorney general K K Venugopal, appearing for the IITs, ruled out re-evaluation of answer papers saying it was not possible as 2.5 lakh students had taken the examination. He said two wrong questions were there in only one of the 10 sets of question papers which were in Hindi and it was impossible to find students who opted to take the entrance examination in Hindi. He said there were only two practical options available -either to continue with the bonus marks or strike out the wrong questions.
“We do not know who took the test in Hindi. It is very difficult to find out and that is why it was decided that bonus marks be given to all students. Till date, more than 33,000 candidates have already taken admission and the whole process would have to be started afresh if the merit list is revised,“ Venugopal said.
“It is respectfully submit ted that the relief is entirely against equity since the process of seat allocation is going on and around 33,000 candidates have already accepted the allotted seat and reported for physical verification of the documents... It is submitted that in case the ongoing counselling and admission process is disturbed then the admission procedure of more than 36,000 students in 97 institutes under the joint seat allocation programme for IITs, NITs, IIITs and GFTIs (governmentfunded technical institutions) would be scrapped,“ the IITs said in their affidavit.
The bench, however, said that the apex court's earlier order on the issue could not be overlooked.
No comments:
Post a Comment