An IIT campus

New Delhi, May 6: The Centre today told Parliament that IIT Kharagpur has complied with the Central Information Commission’s instructions to disclose data on the 2006 admissions — although the commission is yet to decide whether the IIT violated its order.

The statement, made in the Rajya Sabha, comes two days before the CIC meets to decide whether the IITs have, contrary to their claims, withheld crucial information on the 2006 exam, despite an order to make it public.

Misinforming Parliament is a violation of government rules and can have serious political repercussions.

The IIT Joint Entrance Examination of 2006 has been mired in controversy after candidates pointed out contradictions between the selection process the institutes claimed to have used and the method actually employed.

Close to 7,000 students were admitted to the IITs, Banaras Hindu University and the Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad, on the basis of that examination.

The Telegraph, on August 6, 2007, had first revealed how the selection method the IITs said they employed in 2006 threw up cut-off figures drastically different from those that the institutes actually used to finalise candidates.

Today, in response to two separate questions, the human resource development ministry told the Rajya Sabha there had been no “bungling” or “manipulations” in the exam, though documents authenticated by the IITs themselves reveal a different picture.

It was on the basis of documents procured by parents of candidates using the Right to Information (RTI) Act that students first questioned the selection process used in 2006.

The documents indeed do not contain evidence of any “manipulations” by IIT officials but reveal discrepancies that suggest “bungling”.

The CIC has issued summons to a former IIT Kharagpur director and two other officials of the institute, threatening to “penalise” them for allegedly violating the RTI Act.

Professor S.K. Dube, who was director of IIT Kharagpur in 2006, D. Gunasekaran, the registrar of the institute, and V.K. Tiwari, who was organising chairman of the JEE-2008, have been ordered to appear before the CIC on May 8.

“It is necessary... for the commission... to identify the person responsible for the delay in providing information so that appropriate penal action can be initiated against the concerned person and to ensure that the information asked for by the appellant is supplied to him in full,” the CIC has said in its order. IIT Kharagpur was in charge of conducting the 2006 JEE.

The order goes on to threaten punishment under the Code of Civil Procedure.

Parents of candidates had first used the RTI Act to try and unravel the selection method used by the IITs — a secret formula till 2006. After resistance, the IITs revealed a formula. But when a parent used this information to challenge the JEE 2006 results in Calcutta High Court, the IITs produced a different formula.

The new formula, too, did not yield the cut-off marks used by the IITs to select students.