Guwahati, June 28: Students of a private CBSE school here have challenged in high court the Gauhati Commerce College decision to fix different cut-off marks for CBSE and state board students that had deprived them of joining undergraduate courses in the institution.

Gauhati Commerce College, which held admissions to undergraduate courses on June 17, had fixed a cut-off of 92.2 per cent for CBSE students as opposed to 74 per cent for state board students.

Chitrajyoti Bora, one of the five students who moved the court, said they had urged the court to look into the matter so that students from both boards were considered equal and given admission accordingly. “There is a huge difference in the cut-off marks for students from these two boards. Why the difference? Did we not study to score good marks? I scored 77 per cent in the examination and yet I did not get a seat in Gauhati Commerce College,” he said.

Sukanya Das, Vijaykumar Sharma, Dipjyoti Kalita and Suraj Konwar, too, approached the court with the same grievance. All five passed the Class XII exam from Modern English School, Kahilipara.

“The difference in cut-off marks is big. This kind of discrimination should not be there. I scored 80 per cent and still did not get admission in the college. Now I’m looking for a private institute to take admission,” Vijaykumar said.

Gauhati Commerce College principal Ghanashyam Nath said being a government college, they reserved a certain number of seats for CBSE students and the rest for those from the state board along with their own ex-students. “It has been done for years. If students of the two boards are treated equal during admission, hardly 50 state board students will get admission, as CBSE is liberal with marks,” he said.

Nath said they used to reserve 10 per cent seats for CBSE students but this had been increased to 15 per cent, keeping in mind the increase in the number of students.

He said the college had 600 seats in various undergraduate courses.