TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2011 (10) TMI 590
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....s in Physics and 52 marks in Chemistry, aggregating to 231. The Board had fixed the cut off marks for admission as 37 for Maths, 48 for Physics and 55 for Chemistry and the aggregate cut off marks as 154. As first appellant did not secure the minimum of 55 marks in chemistry he was not qualified, even though his aggregate in the three subjects was very high. 3. The second appellant wrote a letter dated 5.9.2006 to all the IIT Chairmen/Directors alleging anomalies and inherent contradictions in the selection process. He alleged that the cut off marks were fixed arbitrarily and with malafides in a manner that a student such as the first appellant with 231 marks was found to be not qualified whereas a student who got aggregate marks of 154 was found to have qualified. The appellants also filed several applications under the Right to Information Act 2005 and collected considerable data. The appellants claim that when they sought information about the procedure for computation of cut off marks for JEE 2006 the organising Chairman, JEE 2006 gave two different versions at different points of time. 4. The first response given by the Organizing Chairman, JEE 2006 on 14.5.2007 read as ....
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....ve, erroneous and malafide process adopted for cut-off determination, the appellants filed a writ petition (WP 11434 (W) of 2007) claiming the following reliefs, apart from several consequential reliefs : (a) To quash the selection and merit list of admissions to IIT/ITBHU/ISM on the basis of JEE 2006 as it was prepared on the basis of imposition of illogical and cut off marks in three subjects without any rational basis; (b) to prepare and publish fresh chemistry marks for admissions to IITs in regard to JEE 2006 after making appropriate corrections in evaluation by adjusting the wrong evaluation and on that basis prepare and publish fresh merit list for admission to IITs/ITBHU/ISM in regard to JEE 2006. 6. A learned Single Judge dismissed the said writ petition holding as follows : (a) The appellants could not challenge the procedure for determination of cut off in JEE 2006 as they had given a signed declaration that the decision of JAB regarding the admission to be final and they would abide by the said decision. (b) The respondents had justified as to the manner of arriving at the cut off marks for Chemistry in JEE 2006 and it was within the domain of the Joint A....
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....145,439 candidates in this category, in perfect agreement with the data provided by IIT- Kharagpur. Category B: I found 287,564 candidates in this category, in perfect agreement with the data provided by IIT- Kharagpur. 2. Cut-off marks in Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry: Mathematics Physics Chemistry IIT-Kharagpur data 37 48 55 Category A of this study 7 4 6 Category B of this study,provided for the sake of completeness -3 8 -6 In terms of cut-off marks, my findings do not agree at all with the data provided by IIT-Kharagpur. Since the procedure used by IIT-Kharagpur for the determination of the cut-off is the same as the computation I performed for candidates in Category A, a direct comparison is valid. 3. For the subject of Chemistry, following the formula provided by IIT-Kharagpur, the cut-off marks determined by my analysis is only 6, whereas it is 55 in the data provided by IIT-Kharagpur." 9. The JAB appointed a two member committee of IIT Directors (Mr. Gautam Barua, Director, IIT, Guwahati and Mr. Dewang Khakhar, Director, IIT, Bombay) to work out the cut-off marks for chemistry. They ....
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....ransparent and simple than the selection process of 2006 and the JAB had made an effort after JEE 2006 to ensure that the candidates get a clearer picture, demonstrating that there were no possibilities of any unfair means in the process of selection. The said judgment is challenged in this appeal by special leave. 11. The question for consideration is whether the procedure adopted by the Board to arrive at the cut off marks for JEE 2006 is arbitrary and mala fide and whether the High Court ought to have interfered in the matter. 12. Learned counsel for the appellants submitted that the minutes of the meeting of JAB 2006 held on 17.9.2005 which laid down the procedure for holding the JEE 2006, furnished by the respondents, did not contain the cut off procedure for JEE 2006. It was submitted that the cut off procedure which was fixed before the examination was repeatedly changed after the examination and that the two different versions given by the Board at different points of time demonstrated that none of the procedures showed 55% as the chemistry cut off marks; that the procedure adopted was full of errors and defects; and that if the iterative procedure explained by the Bo....
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.... achieve this result and shortlist about 5500 candidates from out of 287564 candidates, the above mentioned traditional procedures will not be of assistance. Therefore, a rather complicated but scientific procedure has been followed. We may at this juncture set out the Evaluation procedure for JEE 2006 and the Procedure for cut-off determination in JEE 2006 done by iterative process, followed by the Board. "Evaluation Procedure for JEE 2006 Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) conducted by the IITs for admission to the Under-graduate course in all the seven IITs, IT-BHU and ISM Dhanbad is considered to be the best and the toughest admission test in the world. This is primarily intended to attract the brightest of the young minds for education and research in engineering and technology in India. Joint Entrance Examination (JEE)-2006 was conducted on 9th April 2006 was one stage of examination as approved by the Joint Admission Board (JAB). In this examination, there were three question papers namely Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry. Each question paper was objective type in nature to test the aptitude and comprehension ability of the candidates. Each question paper i....
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.... FOR CUT-OFF DETERMINATION IN JEE-2006: (i) For each subject, mean and standard deviation of the marks obtained are computed. For this computation only scores of those candidates who have secured minimum of 1 (one) mark in each of the three subjects have been considered. (ii) The cut-off marks of an individual subject is calculated as Cut-off mark of a subject = Mean of the marks for the subject - Standard deviation of the marks for the subject. The result has been rounded to the nearest integer. (iii) The mean and standard deviation of the aggregate marks are calculated for those candidates who score at least one mark in each subject. (iv)The aggregate cut-off mark is calculated as Aggregate cut-off = (Mean of aggregate marks - Standard deviation of Aggregate marks) rounded to nearest integer-- a positive number. The number selected for counseling (i.e. qualified in JEE-2006 for counseling) is 1.3 x the number of seats available in all participating Institutions. Each time 1 (one) mark is added to the mean-standard deviation of the aggregate marks and the number obtained is compared with the desired numb....
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.... Mean = X, Individual marks = M, Number of Student = n. Obtain final cut off marks by subtracting 1 mark from cut off marks of the subject having low average Then the idea is to reduce the number from 134449 to around 5500. The cut off marks were recalculated for each subject by adopting the formula of cut off marks being mean marks less standard deviation of the marks and rounding it off to the lowest integer. Then if the number is still more, again calculate by applying the cut off marks procedure with reference to the reduced number. By this process the cut off marks have been arrived at in regard to each subject for 5585 which was nearest to 5500. Thereafter taking the data set of the said 5585 shortlisted the aggregate cut off was determined by following iterative process : "Step 1 Total desired number of candidates to be called for counseling (including SC,ST and PD candidates) > 6307 (NTD). This number is disclosed in the Counseling Brochure sent to all the qualified candidates Step 2 Take dataset (N) obtained after arriving at the final subject cutoff marks. Step 3 Calculate Mean and Standard Deviation o....
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.... to academic matters in preference to those formulated by professional men possessing technical expertise and rich experience of actual day-to-day working of educational institutions and the departments controlling them." In All India Council for Technical Education v. Surinder Kumar Dhawan [2009 (11) SCC 726] this court held : "The courts are neither equipped nor have the academic or technical background to substitute themselves in place of statutory professional technical bodies and take decisions in academic matters involving standards and quality of technical education. If the courts start entertaining petitions from individual institutions or students to permit courses of their choice, either for their convenience or to alleviate hardship or to provide better opportunities, or because they think that one course is equal to another, without realizing the repercussions on the field of technical education in general, it will lead to chaos in education and deterioration in standards of education. The role of statutory expert bodies on education and role of courts are well defined by a simple rule. If it is a question of educational policy or an issue involving academic ma....
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.... process which is uniform and nondiscriminatory, it cannot be described as arbitrary or capricious or mala fide. 20. The appellants in this case have alleged mala fides on the part of Chairman of the Board and Chairman of the Organising Committee. The allegation is that on account of personal enmity, rivalry and hostility harboured by them towards the second appellant, who happens to be a professor at IIT, Kharagpur, they manipulated the ranking and selection process and deliberately set cut-off marks to deny admission to second appellants' son, a seat in an IIT. The appellants have not made out, even remotely, any such motive, in regard to the procedure for arriving at the cutoff marks. The claim that to deny admission to one student from among more than 2,87,000 students, they manipulated the process of fixing cut-off marks is too far fetched and difficult to accept, apart from the fact that there is no iota of material to support such a claim. It is too much to assume that where nearly three lakhs candidates appeared, a particular procedure was adopted to ensure that a particular candidate failed. It would appear that somewhat similar procedure was adopted in the year 2000 an....
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....itional methods of short-listing may not be of assistance. The traditional methods would result in the candidates who have done extremely well in one subject or two subjects but have little or no proficiency in the third subject to steal a march over candidates who have done uniformly well in all the three subjects. For example, in the traditional method where 40% are the minimum marks required to be scored in each subject, a candidate who just gets 40% in Maths and 40% in Physics and 91% in Chemistry, would be eligible and as his total marks are 171, will get admitted in preference to a candidate who did uniformly well and secured 52 marks in Maths, 53 marks in Physics and 65 marks in Chemistry whose total is 170 marks. The result is that a candidate who is comparatively poor in Maths and Physics, secures a seat by virtue of his good performance in Chemistry, in preference to a candidate who has done uniformly well in all subjects. The traditional procedure may not therefore help in securing candidates who do well in all subjects. If one has to choose the candidates with good performances in all subjects, with the average of the performance of all the candidates who participated i....
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....rmation. Subsequently when pressed, the Board has come out with complete disclosure of the process adopted. 24. It is true that the procedure for ranking by IIT-JEE has not been uniform. Some years, variable cut-off marks were adopted and some years fixed minimum marks were adopted. In JEE 2000 and JEE 2001, there was independent cut off for each subject and also for the aggregate, as in JEE 2006. In JEE 2004, the qualifying criteria and the ranks in the screening tests were based on the total marks scored and there were no individual subject cut off marks. A common merit list was prepared based on the performance in individual subjects as well as aggregate in the main examination. In JEE 2005, the qualifying criteria and the ranks in the screening tests were based on the total marks scored and there were no individual subject cut off marks. In JEE 2006 there were independent cut off marks for each subject and also for the aggregate, and the cut off procedure was not disclosed before the JEE examination. However in JEE 2007 and JEE 2008 subject cut off procedure was made available to the public through the JEE website before the JEE examination. During JEE 2007, the subjects cut....
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....rocedures, nor as sound and effective as the present procedures. In fact the action taken by the appellants in challenging the procedure for JEE 2006, their attempts to bring in transparency in the procedure by various RTI applications, and the debate generated by the several views of experts during the course of the writ proceedings, have helped in making the merit ranking process more transparent and accurate. IITs and the candidates who now participate in the examinations must, to a certain extent, thank the appellants for their effort in bringing such transparency and accuracy in the ranking procedure. But there is no ground for that Courts to interfere with the procedure, even if it was not accurate or efficient, in the absence of malafides or arbitrariness or violation of law. It is true that if in JEE 2006, a different or better process had been adopted, or the process now in vogue had been adopted, the results would have been different and the first appellant might have obtained a seat. But on that ground it is not possible to impute malafides or arbitrariness, or grant any relief to the first appellant. Therefore, the appellant will have to be satisfied in being one of the....