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Latest News |
| 26th
Aug 2010 / Times of India / Bangalore Edition |
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SC notice on alleged JEE irregularities
TOWARDS BETTER EXAM ETHICS
Petition Seeks Exam Reforms
New Delhi: Admitting a special leave petition seeking
reforms in the Joint Entrance Examination conducted for
admission to 15 IITs and other institutes, Supreme Court
on Tuesday issued notice to HRD ministry, IIT Council
the apex body managing IITs and Joint Admission Board,
which conducts IIT-JEE, for alleged irregularities and
largescale bungling in the exam.
The SLP, filed by IIT- Kharagpur professor Rajeev Kumar,
challenged the June 2010 order of Delhi High Court which
had dismissed a PIL by Kumar on the ground that he had
no locus standi to challenge the validity of JEE. The
SLP sought directions from the apex court for comprehensive
reforms in the conduct of JEE to enhance transparency
and accountability.
The petition requested the SC to make specific directions
for probe by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) into irregularities,
tampering, fraud and abuse in the conduct of JEEs. It
also sought constitution of a committee of independent
experts to formulate a single examination for entrance
to engineering institutions rather than having a committee
of four IIT directors.
The petition said JAB should be asked to release model
answers immediately after the examination was over. It
sought additional safeguards to prevent tampering of the
optical response sheets, not to repeat same set of persons
as question setters or JEE administrators for more then
two years and also to ensure strict vigilance, publish
status of vacant seats and filled-in seats on day-to-day
basis during admission counselling, set conceptual &
analytical questions, and evaluation based on differential
grading in lieu of binary grading.
Arguing on behalf of the petitioner, senior counsel Prashant
Bhushan told the apex court that the PIL in Delhi HC was
a comprehensive one based on extensive research and analysis
of past five years JEE data by Kumar. The data, Bhushan
said, was otherwise kept secret by IITs. The data came
to light as under RTI Act, IITs were forced to reveal
various aspects of JEE results. In fact, many queries
under RTI were answered only after the Central Information
Commission passed strict orders.
Bhushan also said Kumar had established many irregularities
and discrepancies which had come into the IITJEE examination
system in the past 50 years but were kept a secret. It
was also argued that detailed analysis of previous JEE
data had revealed many discrepancies and irregularities,
like ad hocism in cut-off determination, unattended errors
in question settings/evaluation, tampering/shredding of
optical response sheet in undue haste, promoting coaching
institutes, lacking transparency and accountability, selecting
IIT administrators wards in some IITs,closed admission
counselling resulting in irregularities in admissions
and seats lying vacant, zero accountability for attending
to apparent errors and poor ethics in JEE administration.
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