JEE Advanced 2018: Madras High court stays order to redo rank list

The Madras High Court on Tuesday stayed an order directing IIT-Kanpur to redo the rank list of JEE Advanced 2018, giving preference to candidates who answered numerical values rounded off to two decimal points.

A division bench of Justices Huluvadi G Ramesh and Dhandapani in its order said that the July 2 order of the single judge was totally unwarranted since the evaluation of the exam was already done.

The plea was moved by L Lakshmi Sree who had appeared for JEE Advanced test in Chennai on May 20.

The petitioner sought a direction to quash the clarification issued by the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur against its original instructions given during the May 20 exam.

During the exam candidates were instructed to answer in correct numerical value in decimal notation rounded off to the second decimal place.

The petitioner said that she answered the questions as per instructions, however, some candidates gave answers which were not up to the second decimal.

Meanwhile, authorities 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”.

Aggrieved with the notification, Sree approached the high court saying awarding marks to candidates who did not follow the instructions would affect the ranks of candidates like her who followed the instructions.

The bench then posted the matter after three weeks.

Partly allowing the petitioner’s plea, authorities the court directed to give preference to candidates who answered as per original instructions.

Immediately, the institute suspended the seat allocation process and filed an appeal in the court challenging the single judge order.

During the hearing, senior counsel Vijay Narayanan submitted that the order passed after the evaluation of the test had created confusion among students and parents, adding when the petitioner had already secured a seat of her choice such an order was not necessary.

Recording the submissions, the bench stayed the order of the single judge.

(With inputs from agencies)