High Court stays order on IIT-Kanpur rank list

A division bench comprising of Justice Huluvadi G Ramesh and Justice Dhandapani issued the stay after holding, “When the evaluation of exam had been already done, the order of the single judge is totally unwarranted.” 

The petitioner L Lakshmi Sree who appeared for JEE Advanced in Chennai on May 20, had submitted that during the exam, candidates were instructed to answer in correct numerical value in decimal notation rounded off to the second decimal place. It was made clear that full marks would be given only if answered as per the instructions.

Subsequently, the authorities concerned made a clarification on their website stating that, “If an answer is the integer 11, all the answered entered as 11, 11.0, or 11.00 will be correct.”

Based on this, she contended that she spent quality time to answer the questions by entering correct numerical value in decimal notation rounding off to second decimal as per the instruction. But, some of the candidates, without reading the instructions carefully, had answered with one decimal point or without any decimal notation, she added and noted that awarding marks to candidates who had not strictly followed the original instructions would affect the marks and ranks of those who had strictly followed the instructions spending valuable time. 

Partly allowing the plea, the single judge directed the authorities to give preference to candidates who answered as per original instructions and sought the authorities to redo the list. 

Following this, the institute suspended the counselling and approached the court on appeal. Senior counsel Vijay Narayanan submitted that the order which has been passed after evaluation of the exam has created much confusion among students and their parents. When the petitioner has already secured a seat of her choice such an order is totally unnecessary, he added.