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| Saturday, April 28, 2007
Court upholds CET abolition
- "The legislation does not dilute education standards"
- "Present scheme non-exploitative"
Chennai: The legal validity of the Tamil Nadu Government's policy
to abolish Common Entrance Test (CET) for admissions to professional
courses was upheld by the Madras High Court on Friday.
Dismissing a batch of public interest litigation petitions challenging
the Tamil Nadu Admission in Professional Educational Institutions
Act 2006, a Division Bench comprising Justice Prafulla Kumar
Misra and Justice J.A.K. Sampath Kumar said: "Abolition
of Common Entrance Test does not have the ipso facto effect
of lowering the standard. The only effect is that selection
is not based on a common platform and therefore, vulnerable
to the attack based on the principle of equality. This vulnerability
has been overcome by equalisation [of marks]."
The Bench also concluded that the normalisation of marks, which
forms the basis of the new admission policy of the State Government
was not so arbitrary as to warrant the court's intervention
on the ground of violation of the Fundamental Right to Equality.
The judges were of the opinion that the concept of absolute
equality was a myth as even under the CET regime there was an
inherent possibility of students ticking some answers more by
guesswork than by any conscious selection of the right answer.
"Even though, ideally, absolute equality is required to
be achieved, it is not possible to do so. Even where there is
only one examination by one institution, it cannot be said that
there is absolute equality because the answer papers are examined
by different examiners, who obviously have different yardsticks
of marking."
Welfare legislation
Mr. Justice Sampath Kumar, delivering a supplementary order
concurring with Mr. Justice Misra, said it was a social welfare
legislation seeking to achieve social justice. "The impugned
order is to prevent harassment of and hardship to students of
the socially and economically backward and weaker sections hailing
both from urban and rural areas in getting admission to professional
courses."
He said the selection process should be fair, transparent and
non-exploitative, and added, "The present scheme satisfies
the three conditions." Conceding that some students may
be affected by the scheme, Mr. Justice Sampath Kumar said that
it, however, should not be construed that the Act itself was
in violation of the principle of equality.
Pointing out that the Medical Council of India and the All India
Council for Technical Education specifically asserted that the
Act was not repugnant to their guidelines, he said the legislation
was not in conflict with any Central Act and that it did not
dilute or lower the standards of higher education.
Courtesy: The Hindu
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