New Delhi, July 10 (Agencies): The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Indian Institutes of Technology to go ahead with admissions to their undergraduate programmes, vacating a stay it had ordered last Friday after a candidate challenged the award of bonus marks.
A bench of Justices Dipak Misra, A.M. Khanwilkar and Mohan M. Shantanagoudar also asked the high courts not to interfere in petitions regarding counselling and admission to the 23 IITs in the country.
The Joint Entrance Examination (Advanced) 2017 was held on May 21, and the results declared on June 11. Counselling helps candidates choose the best college and stream that matches the rank secured by them.
The bench asked the IITs to ensure that situations requiring the award of bonus marks do not arise.
In the JEE (Advanced) 2017, bonus marks had been given to all candidates for an incorrect question—to those who attempted it and also to those who skipped it.
Attorney General K.K. Venugopal, representing the IITs, said such a situation would not arise.
The bench said the 2005 judgment in Guru Nanak Dev University case will not apply here, as that involved only 10,000 students and the IIT case involved 1.56 lakh students.
Also, the IIT exam had negative marking, and the Guru Nanak University exam did not.
The apex court also noted that an experts' body of IITs had met twice to decide that bonus marks should be awarded across the board for the wrong question.
The Supreme Court had on July 7 restrained the IITs from conducting further counselling and admissions, saying the court will go by its earlier judgment of 2005 and bonus marks cannot be given to those who have not attempted the wrong question.
The AG had pointed out that the JEE had a negative marking system for wrong answers, so some students may have skipped the incorrect question fearing negative marking.
This is why the IITs decided to award bonus marks to all candidates, Venugopal said.
The AG had also said that it was difficult to re-evaluate the answer sheets of the large number students who wrote the examination and awarding of bonus marks across board was the most practical solution.
The apex court had on June 30 issued notice to the Ministry of Human Resource Development on a plea seeking quashing of the IIT-JEE 2017 rank list.
The petition, filed by an IIT aspirant Aishwarya Agarwal, had sought the court's direction to declare that the action of awarding bonus marks to candidates who had appeared in the JEE (Advanced) 2017 examination was wrong and violated her right, as well as that of other students.