Patna, Sept. 23: Patna High Court today directed the chief secretary and principal secretary, health, to decide the matter of lowering pass marks of the SC/ST students for admission into the MBBS course.

Bihar Combined Entrance Competitive Examination Board (BCECEB) conducted the Bihar Combined Entrance Competitive Examination early this year. The court had earlier stayed admission against 17 seats marked under the SC/ST category.

The order was passed by the single bench of Justice Birendra Prasad Verma. The court ordered to settle the matter by September 27.

The court observed that the provisions of the SC/ST Atrocity Act 1989 and SC/ST Prevention Atrocities Rules 1995 should be kept intact.

Senior advocate Y.V. Giri earlier told the court that during the first and second round of counselling, 48 SC/ST students were selected by the BCECEB and accordingly they were to be allotted MBBS seats. These 48 candidates were even allotted colleges for admission into MBBS course.

However, in the third revised list that the BCECEB came out with on August 28, names of these 48 successful candidates were omitted. Of these 48 candidates, 42 belong to the SC category while the rest are from the ST category. The plea forwarded by the BCECEB in leaving out these 48 candidates was that all of them had secured below 40 per cent of marks in the written test conducted by the board and so they were not selected for the MBBS course.

Later, 17 candidates had filed a writ petition in the high court challenging the BCECEB’s discretion of leaving out the SC/ST candidates.