Indian Supreme Court stays IIT counselling over "bonus marks" in IIT-JEE Advance

The Supreme Court prohibited the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) across the country from conducting counselling sessions or admitting students into the institutes till further notice this year.

The stay is over an 18-marks bonus being awarded to all students who appeared in the Advanced Joint Entrance Exams this year as the answer key to seven questions had been lost. It is applicable to all the institutes which use the IIT-JEE (Advanced) results for admissions.

A bench of Justices headed by Dipak Misra restrained the high courts from entertaining any writ petition relating to counselling and admissions to the IITs from now on.

It also sought details of the number of cases and petitioners challenging the IIT-JEE 2017 rank list. The apex court had issued notice to the Indian ministry of (MHRD) human resource development on a plea seeking an end to the IIT-JEE 2017 rank list.

The petition filed by IIT aspirant Aishwarya Agarwal, had sought the court's direction to declare that the action of awarding "bonus marks" to the candidates who had appeared in the JEE (Advanced) 2017 examination, was wrong and violated her right, as well as that of other students.

It sought a direction for preparation of the all-India rank list after rectifying the scores of JEE (Advanced) and also award marks to the candidates who had attempted the answers for the incorrect questions.

As an alternative, the petitioner said the institution should conduct fresh examination and prepare a fresh merit list or grant all students another opportunity to appear in the examination to be conducted next year.

The petition also sought an interim stay on the merit list and the counselling, saying it would cause serious prejudice to the petitionerand other deserving candidates.

The next hearing on the matter will be on Monday, July 10.