Percentile norm infuriates Andhra's bright IIT aspirants

Despite reaping a rich haul of ranks in the IIT entrance examination, including four in the All India top ten slots, the students from Andhra Pradesh (AP) find themselves in a disadvantageous position in terms of the final admissions because of the mandatory ‘top 20 percentile’ norm.

As per the norm fixed by the authorities, only those who are among the top 20 percentile category in the qualifying 12th standard examination of their respective state boards are eligible for admission into the IITs.

Traditionally, AP has been witnessing a fierce competition at the junior college level with scores over 90 per cent in the science stream being very common.  As a result, the number of top scoring students in the 12th standard in AP is much higher compared to other states. Also, the AP students have been performing exceedingly well in the IIT entrance test. A large number of private coaching centres have sprung up in Hyderabad and other cities to train the students for what is arguably the toughest screening test for admission into professional degree course.

In the IIT JEE (Advanced) 2013, Hyderabad boy P Sai Sandeep Reddy, son of a school teacher, had bagged the all India first rank while AP accounted for nine out of the top 25 ranks including first, second, seventh and eighth positions.

The JEE authorities had recently released the cut-off figures for each state to gain eligibility for admission into the IITs -- the dream destination for science students in the country. The cut-off figures for general category students, released by JEE, have stunned students from the state. They have to score more than 91.1 per cent to gain eligibility — the highest in the country.  Jharkhand has the lowest cut-off of 56.20 per cent. Barring Karnataka (86 per cent), Kerala (85.2 per cent) and Tamil Nadu (90.9 per cent), the students of all other states need to score less than 80 per cent to be eligible for admission into the IITs. For Maharashtra, the cut-off figure is 68.2 percent.

Some students in AP find themselves out of the IIT race despite scoring seat-fetching marks because they are not among the top 20 percentile scorers in intermediate, the 12th standard exam conducted by the state board. “There must be a level-playing field. Why should we be punished for performing better in the qualifying examination compared to our counterparts in other states?,” asks Jasmita, who had an All India rank of 2,743 in the IIT JEE but failed to get a seat at IIT,Kharagpur, because of the percentile factor.

Some students have approached the State Board of Intermediate Education but the officials there pleaded helplessness, saying that the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) had arrived at the cut-off figures based on the data provided by the state board. The exact number of the affected candidates from AP due to the percentile norm will be known only after the IIT admission process gets over.

Counseling process

Peeved by the way Madras IIT has sent back students even after they received offer letters, showing the percentile clause as the reason, few students resorted for a legal battle. The AP high court recently directed the IIT authorities to the reserve seats of four such candidates as allotted earlier. In response to the writ petition filed by Anudeep Pendyala and three others, Justice Ramesh Ranganathan said the denial of seats to the four petitioners is in violation of Article 14 of Indian Constitution.

The court issued notices to IIT authorities asking them to reserve the four seats allotted to these candidates until the final verdict is given. However, the court said the IITs can continue with the counseling process. Meanwhile, the state government has promised to extend help to the JEE advanced rankers who were denied seats in IITs.

When rankers and their parents met secondary education minister Kolusu Parthasarathi, he said the the CBSE has communicated to the state government (Board of Intermediate Education) to consider the candidates in all streams, including MPC, BiPC, HEC, CEC and MEC, to calculate the percentile. When this was done, the cut-off mark that the state arrived at was 457 for general category students. But the CBSE had taken only candidates who appeared for MPC stream into consideration while deciding the top 20 percentile, which increased the cut-off mark in general category to 487, which had cost seats to many students from state.

Meanwhile, the state government decided to write to CBSE and Joint Admission Board (JAB) of JEE explaining the injustice done to AP candidates by their selection of only MPC stream in deciding the top 20 percentile marks. The minister said lack of proper communication between the CBSE and JAB might have created the problem.

Andhra Pradesh has earned the distinction of sending the largest contingent of students for the IITs for the last decade and this is growing year after year. It is being said that by introducing percentile system, Central Minister Kapil Sibal reportedly achieved his ambition of scuttling IIT rankers from AP. Usually for more than 6000 plus seats in IIT, students from AP occupy no less than 3,000 ranks but this time this figure has fallen to less than 1,700 due to introduction of percentile system.

Strongly opposing linking intermediate marks for allotment of ranks for admission into various IITs in the country, TDP president and leader of opposition N Chandrababu Naidu saw a conspiracy to deny seats to AP students in premier institutions. Naidu said his party will fight a legal battle, if necessary, against the new system and raise the issue in Parliament also. The concept of giving weightage to intermediate course marks caused discrimination between the candidates from different regions and states.

Naidu feels the cut off marks under the 20 percentile was varying from as low as 53 per cent in Tripura state to as high as 91.89 per cent in AP.