Hyderabad: The Supreme Court has lifted the stay on admission and counseling processes of IIT, NIT and other engineering colleges across the country. This brings a great relief to thousands of IIT-JEE aspirants.
Dismissing the petition that challenged the awarding of bonus marks, the Supreme Court directed all high courts from admitting any case related to this to avoid any further confusion.
On Friday, the court had put on hold admissions to IITs, NITs and other colleges, based on a writ petition filed by a student who had appeared for the IIT-Jee (Advanced) 2017 exams. Two questions of the paper were wrong and the examination authorities had decided to give 18 marks attributed to it as bonus to all students irrespective of whether the questions were attempted or not. This put the top rankers at a disadvantage against those who got the bonus marks even if they had not attempted the questions.
The Supreme Court issued a warning to the examination board and said that printing errors should not be repeated and directed all engineering institutions to go ahead with the admission.
Sashidhar Bhandari who heads an IIT academy said, “Although it is unfortunate that few students have got higher marks then top rankers, stopping admissions would have become a huge issue. The students were worried sick that they would have had to write the exams again.”
Lalith Aditya 7th ranker IIT JEE said, “We were very stressed. If the exam had to be re-conducted, half the year would have been wasted.”
