New Delhi: The Supreme Court has stayed admissions to the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology over (IITs) the award of bonus marks to candidates who appeared for the Joint Entrance Examination (Advanced) this year.
The students were awarded grace marks as the answer key to seven of the questions went missing. A petition filed before the court had objected to the awarding of grace marks to all candidates, irrespective of whether they attempted these questions.
The stay applies to all institutes that used the IIT-JEE (Advanced) 2017 for admissions.
The bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra said that no High Court in the country will entertain any petition in respect of the JEE-IIT (Advanced) from now.
It further directed the Registrar Generals of the High Courts to inform by Saturday the nature of cases and the number of petitioners involved in respect of JEE-IIT (Advanced) pending before them, IANS reported.
On June 30, the apex court had 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 IIT aspirant Aishwarya Agarwal, had sought the court's direction to declare that the action of awarding "bonus marks" to the candidates who had appeared in the JEE (Advanced) 2017 examination was wrong and violated her right, as well as that of other students.
It also sought a direction for preparation of the all-India rank list after rectifying the scores of JEE (Advanced) and also award marks for the incorrect questions to the candidates who had attempted the right answers.
As an alternative, the petitioner said the institution should conduct fresh examination and prepare a fresh merit list or grant all students another opportunity to appear in the examination to be conducted next year.
The petition also sought an interim stay on the merit list and the counselling, saying it would cause serious prejudice to the petitioner and other deserving candidates.
The top court has now said that will come up with a new method to grand the marks and has restrained the high courts from entertaining any plea on the matter.
The next hearing will be held on Monday.
