SC Orders to Hold JEE Counselling, Merit List Might Be Revised

Supreme Court of Indian (SC) has ordered to put engineering admission process through JEE on stay until further hearing. Justice Dipak Misra and A M Khanwilkar, heading the bench, has also prohibited High Court (HC) from accepting any further pleas regarding the JEE Advanced 2017 grace marks or counselling by IITs. Apart from this, the SC has demanded the lower courts to submit details of all the petitions filed against IIT Joint Entrance Examination 2017 rank list and awarding of 18 bonus marks.

The decision was taken today, on July 07, 2017, after Joint Admission Board of IIT put forth its reason on why 18 grace marks and existing merit list should not be scrapped. The a apex court demanded Center and IIT Madras to provide an explanation after it accepted the petition of JEE Advanced qualifiers, who claim that awarding of 18 bonus marks to all the candidates has affected their merit adversely.

The SC gave a one week’s time to the conducting body and IIT-M reasoned back that already 30000 candidates (approx.) have been allocated seats in various engineering colleges. The scrapping of bonus marks and re-calculation of merit list will now lead to pulling back of admission, which is neither fair nor feasible. What seemed like a boon at a glance, boomeranged in no time.

“It is respectfully submitted that the relief is entirely against equity since the process of seat allocation is going on and 29425 candidates have already accepted the allotted seats and reported for physical verification of documents … It is submitted that in case the ongoing counselling and admission process is disturbed, the admission procedure of more than 36,000 students in 97 institutes under the joint seat allocation programme for IITs, NIITs, IIITs and GFTIs (Government-Funded Technical Institutions) would be scrapped,” read the affidavit filed in SC.

IITs also provided the justification regarding the grace marks allocation on the basis of the misprint. It told SC that no candidate was favored incorrectly on account of printing irregularity. The decision to provided the bonus score was taken after a thorough analysis by the committee of experts, who explored all the options and only then choose the best solution. It further pleaded SC to not consider the plea of the students for the scrapping of the existing JEE Advanced merit list.

The plea of the students was considered on June 30, 2017, by the apex court. The petition by the students claimed that awarding of 18 bonus marks is unfair and it has adversely affected their ranking, hence shattering their dreams studying in a college and course of their choice.

Advocate Sushma Suri and DK Devesh, representing the students stated that awarding of grace marks to all the candidates, irrespective if the question has been attempted or not, is ethically wrong and has also violated the fundamental rights. Apart from this, the decision also breaches the former order of the SC, which clearly announces that the bonus marks should only be given to those candidates who attempt the question.  

“IIT-Madras decision to award 18 bonus marks to all the candidates appearing for the examination (11 marks for incorrect questions in Paper II and 7 marks for incorrect questions in Paper I) irrespective of whether or not those candidates even attempted to answer the said questions is clearly arbitrary and violative of the rights of the candidates who successfully solved the said questions,” the petition said.

The advocates also pointed out that the wrong question was only available in one 1 out of 10 sets of question paper. Hence, by no means, it is justifiable to grant grace marks to all the candidates. The students who correctly solved the questions should have been awarded for their efforts. However, the entire scenario has lead to regression in their overall ranking.

This year, 1.7 lakh candidates registered for JEE Advanced 2017. Out of these, 1.6 lakh took the examination. In all, 50,455 students were declared qualified to participate in the JoSAA counselling for 11,032 seats in the existing 23 IITs. Hence, more than half the population has already accepted the faith and is looking forward to next step in life.

Yet, there is half of the population which is a state of despair and hope that SC will provide justice. The next hearing will take place on July 10, 2017. Until then, the candidates can do nothing but wait. How valid do you think is IITs justification and do you think it was right to grant grace marks to all the candidates? Tell us your thought on the matter. Comment below!…