Court upholds Common Entrance Test (CET) Abolition

Court upholds Common Entrance Test (CET) Abolition

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 equalization [of marks].”

• “The legislation does not dilute education standards
• “Present scheme non-exploitative”

The Bench also concluded that the normalization 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.

Court upholds Common Entrance Test (CET) Abolition

Related Web Pages

Court upholds Common Entrance Test CET Abolition |  Common Entrance Test |  CET |  Professional Educational Institutions |  Tamil Nadu Admission |  Welfare Legislation |  All India Council Technical Education | 

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