New Delhi, Oct 14: The Supreme Court has refused to interfere with the ranking and selection process adopted for the prestigious IIT-JEE entrance exams saying there was no arbitrariness or ulterior motives in fixing the methodology.
A bench of justices R V Raveendran and A K Patnaik said courts would interfere with the procedure only if there was proven malafide, caprice or arbitrariness, which it said was lacking in the present system adopted by the Joint Admission Board, the nodal agency for conducting the exams across the country.
“The fact that the procedure was complicated would not make it arbitrary or unreasonable or discriminatory.
“There are several statistical methods of preparing the ranking for the purpose of selecting the best candidates for admission to a course, some simple and some complex. Each method or system has its merits and demerits and can be adopted only under certain conditions or by making certain assumptions.
“Any such statistical technique should be under continuous review and evaluation to achieve improvement in the light of experience gained over the years and new developments, if it is a reliable tool in the selection process,” Justice Raveendran, writing the judgement, said.
The apex court passed the judgement while dismissing the appeal filed by an aspirant Sanchit Bansal, son of an IIT Professor in Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, who had appeared in IIT-JEE 2006 as a general category candidate.
Admission to undergraduate courses in the 15 IITs is through the Common Entrance Examination known as the Joint Entrance Examination (for short IIT-JEE) conducted by the board.
Sanchit had secured 75 marks in Mathematics, 104 marks in Physics and 52 marks in Chemistry, aggregating 231.
The Board had fixed the cut-off marks for admission as 37 for Maths, 48 for Physics and 55 for Chemistry and the aggregate cut-off marks at 154.
As Sanchit did not secure the minimum of 55 marks in Chemistry he was not qualified, even though his aggregate in the three subjects was very high.
Aggrieved, he challenged the procedure on the ground that even candidates who has secured less total aggregate marks were selected, but his claim was rejected.
