The Supreme Court on Monday, July 10, vacated its Friday's stay and said that IITs, NITs and other engineering colleges can go ahead with the counselling and admission process on the basis of the JEE merit list.
The SC has earlier questioned IIT's move to award 18 points to candidates for the incorrect questions – attempted or not – in the JEE (advanced) exams. However, a three-judge bench upheld IIT's decision on Monday.
The IIT had earlier refused to re-evaluate the answer scripts saying it wasn't possible for them to go through about 2.5 lakh copies again. Attorney General KK Venugopal on behalf of IIT had explained that the wrong questions were only in one out of 10 sets of question papers in Hindi Medium and it was not feasible to single out these papers.
"We do not know who took test in Hindi. It is very difficult to find out and that is why it was decided that bonus marks be given to all students. Till date, more than 33,000 have already taken admission and whole process would have to be started afresh if merit list is revised," the Times of India quoted Venugopal as saying.
He had said that instead of singling out these papers, there were two options that the IIT could choose – one would be to award bonus marks to every candidate and the other would be to completely exclude the incorrect question.
