Kerala HC Division Bench Dismisses State Governmen't Appeal

THIRUVANANTHAPURM: Kerala High Court's division bench on Thursday dismissed the state government's appeal against the cancellation of the KEAM 2025 rank list , upholding a single bench decision that declared the amended prospectus and resulting rank list invalid.

Kerala Engineering Architecture Medical (KEAM) is a state level entrance exam for the professional courses in Kerala conducted by the Commissioner for Entrance Examinations.

A division bench comprising Justice Anil K Narendran and Justice Muralee Krishna S found no grounds to interfere with the earlier order stating that the government acted beyond the recommendations of its own expert committee when it changed the standardisation formula.

The court observed that although the KEAM process started based on the original prospectus, the formula for normalising +2 marks in the ratio of 5:3:2 for Maths, Physics and Chemistry was revised in the amended prospectus just an hour before the rank list was released. The original ratio had been 1:1:1 .

The bench noted that the expert committee had only suggested reducing the number of years considered for standardisation and possibly adopting a 60:40 weightage between entrance marks and +2 scores.

However, there was no recommendation to implement the 5:3:2 formula .

The report relied on by the advocate general does not support the government's decision to adopt an entirely different standardisation procedure," the bench remarked.

Disparity among state syllabus students cited: During the hearing , the AG stated that the amendment was intended to address a disparity affecting state syllabus students, pointing out that Clause 1.6 of the prospectus permitted the government to make changes when necessary.

He stated that the new formula was chosen from five options proposed by the expert committee and was meant to create a level playing field.

However, opposing counsels argued that the sudden change made without disclosing any compelling public interest or data backed justification, unfairly favoured Kerala syllabus students while disadvantageous to those from the CBSE and ICSE backgrounds.

KEAM is the primary pathway for engineering admissions in the state. The KEAM engineering entrance paper consists of 150 multiple choice questions; 75 from Mathematics, 45 from Physics and 30 from Chemistry. These must be answered in 180 minutes . The score is out of 300 , with 4 marks awarded for each correct answer and 1 mark deducted for every wrong response.

The petitioners had argued that their ranks had dropped significantly due to the formula change, reducing their chances of admission.

The state government on the other hand, had defended the new formula stating that the standardisation process could have caused a 35 mark loss for Kerala syllabus students, which is why the new formula was adopted to ensure fairness for all.