SC seeks Centre’s response over plea to quash IIT-JEE rank list

The Supreme Court on Friday sought the Centre’s response on a plea seeking quashing of the IIT Joint Entrance Examination 2017 rank list and awarding of additional marks to all candidates who had appeared in the test.

A vacation bench of Justices A M Sapre and S K Kaul, which also issued notice to the Ministry of Human Resource Development and Indian Institute of Technoloy (IIT) Madras, did not stay the conselling which commenced on Thursday.

IIT Madras had organised the IIT-JEE exam this year.

The apex court asked the government and the institution to file their replies within one week and listed the petition filed by an IIT aspirant, Aishwarya Agarwal, for hearing on July 7. The petition has sought the court’s direction to declare that the action of awarding “bonus marks” to candidates who had appeared in the JEE (Advanced)- 2017 examination was wrong and violated her right, as well as that of other students.

It also sought a direction for preparation of the allIndia rank list after rectifying the scores of JEE (Advanced) and also award marks for the incorrect questions to the candidates who had attempted the right answers.

As an alternative, the petitioner said the institution should conduct fresh examination and prepare a fresh merit list or grant all students another opportunity to appear in the examination to be conducted next year. The petition also sought an interim stay on the merit list and the counselling, saying it would cause serious prejudice to the petitioner and other deserving candidates.

It said when several candidates had raised objections over some questions in both the papers being incorrect, IIT Madras had decided to award 18 bonus marks to all the students appearing in the examination, irrespective of whether they had attempted the questions.

It was “clearly arbitrary and violative of the rights of the candidates who successfully solved the said questions,” the plea said. –PTI