Delhi High Court admits plea to stay IIT-JEE result

NEW DELHI - The Delhi High Court Thursday admitted a public interest litigation of a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that has sought stay on the declaration of result of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) entrance exam held April 11.

Raising the issue of errors in the instructions for examinees who took the IIT joint entrance examination (IIT-JEE) in Hindi, the NGO, Satya Foundation, filed the public interest litigation (PIL) on April 25, which was heard Thursday.

Chetan Upadhyaya, secretary and counsel of Satya Foundation, Thursday submitted before the court a list of serious blunders in the IIT JEE-2010 and said that instead of accepting the faults and re-conducting the examination, the Joint Admission Board was trying to cover up the issue with “corrective measures” which are “totally illogical and can’t be digested by anybody”.

The IIT-JEE board evolved corrective measures May 2 to ensure that genuine candidates were not affected by the examination errors. It formulated a point-by-point remedial action and posted the same on the IIT-JEE website May 2, it said.

But the petitioner demanded an interim stay on the publication of results till the pendency of the petition and also that the examination be reconducted.

The two-judge bench of Acting Chief Justice Madan B. Lokur and Ms. Justice Mukta Gupta, admitting the petition clubbed it along with the earlier petition filed by Rajeev Kumar, a professor at IIT Kharagpur through his legal counsel Prashant Bhushan April 7 for overall transparency in the IIT-JEE system.

Both the PILs will be heared before the court May 19.

The results of IIT-JEE-2010 are expected to be declared by May 26.

Chetan Upadhyaya expressed his strong disagreement before the court for clubbing the two PILs.

“These are two different issues, my PIL is about errors in the Hindi version of question paper of the IIT-JEE 2010 while Dr Rajeev Kumar’s PIL is about overall transparency in the IIT,” Upadhyaya said.

Anand Kumar, director-cum-founder of Super 30, told IANS over phone from Patna that the corrective steps taken up by the IIT-JEE could not bring justice to the Hindi medium student.

“The corrective measures taken by IIT-JEE can in no way provide justice to the students who opted for the Hindi medium question paper. The only solution is to re-conduct the examination,” Anand Kumar told IANS.

Chetan Upadhyaya said he has full faith in the judiciary and justice will be done.

“I have full faith in the judiciary, I am sure the court will do justice to the thousands of Hindi medium students in the next hearing May 19,” Upadhyaya told IANS.