SC seeks Centre's reply on extra marks granted in IIT-JEE

The Supreme Court on Friday sought the Centre's response to two petitions challenging the grant of seven extra marks to all candidates who had appeared for the IIT-Joint Entrance Examination (Advanced), 2017.

The extra marks were granted in the wake of printing errors in two questions in the Hindi version of the paper.

While issuing notice to the Human Resource Development Ministry, a vacation bench of Justice Abhay Manohar Sapre and Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul refused to interfere with the counselling that commenced on Friday.

The court also issued notice to IIT Chennai which had organised the exam for 2017 and is also joint seat allocation authority.

As the court refused to interfere with the counselling, senior counsel Sushma Suri, appearing for the students who would be adversely affected by the decision, urged the court to say that all admissions would be subject to the outcome of the plea before the court.

At this the bench said that they have issued notice on the plea challenging grant of extra marks to all.

The next hearing would be on July 7.

All the candidates across the board were granted seven marks –three for Chemistry and four for Mathematics.

Senior counsel Suri said that one can understand if seven marks were given to the students who were given Hindi version of the question paper that had printing errors, but extending it to all belies any justification.

The IIT JE (Advanced) had 10 set of code (papers) each having the same questions with changed order.

Senior counsel Suri told the bench that the difference of just one mark topples the position of a student in the merit list by hundreds, and grant of seven marks would seriously hit the meritorious students who had correctly attempted those questions and secured marks.

Another counsel appearing for the petitioner students said that grant of seven marks to everyone, including those who had wrongly answered the questions or did not even attempt them, amounted to frustrating the merit.

The counsel said that IIT JEE, (Advanced) has negative marking for incorrectly answering a question and giving seven marks even to those who had wrongly answered those questions was not justified.