SC notice to Centre on plea against bonus marks for JEE

The Supreme Court on Friday issued a notice to the Centre on a plea seeking to quash the IIT Joint Entrance Examination 2017 rank list and awarding additional marks to all candidates in the test.

A vacation bench of Justices A M Sapre and S K Kaul sought a response from the Ministry of Human Resource Development and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Madras, which organised the entrance test.

The court, however, did not stay the counselling which commenced on Thursday.
The apex court asked the government and the institution to file their replies within a week and listed the petition filed by an IIT aspirant, Aishwarya Agarwal, for hearing on July 7.

The petitioner questioned IIT-Madras’ decision to award 18 bonus marks to all the students appearing for the exam, irrespective of whether they had attempted the questions, after several candidates raised objections over some questions in both the papers being incorrect.

The petition has sought the court’s direction to declare that the action of awarding “bonus marks” to candidates who had appeared for 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 an all India rank list after rectifying the scores of JEE (Advanced).