Delhi High Court Dismisses Plea Challenging Normalization Procedure Based On Percentile Score Adopted For JEE Mains

The Delhi High Court has rejected a plea challenging the normalization procedure based on percentile score adopted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) for JEE (Mains) examination for entrance into the various Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).

Justice C Hari Shankar said that the process of normalisation is a “detailed statistical process” and dismissed in limine the plea moved by a candidate who appeared the JEE (Main) examination on January 27.

Observing that the entire challenge appeared to be “somewhat nebulous”, the court said that the candidate was fully conscious of the normalization procedure which he went ahead with and undertook the examination.

“Needless to say, had the petitioner obtained a percentile score to his satisfaction, this writ petition would never have been filed,” the court said.

It added that the allegations in the plea were entirely speculative in nature and that the court does not possess the expertise to subjectively go into the intricacies of the normalisation procedure.

“These are matters of academic policy, in which the Court has to defer to the authorities, unless the procedure is found to be so arbitrary or resulting in constitutionally unsustainable results which the court not uphold at any cost. No such case has been made out in the averments contained in the present writ petition,” it said.

Furthermore, Justice Shankar appreciated the fact that when the JEE is being conducted across the country with lakhs of students undertaking the examination, it is but inevitable that all the students cannot be given the same paper, or papers which are clinically of the same level of difficulty.

“Some play in the joints has necessarily to be allowed in case such examinations are to be conducted successfully. Individual discomfitures are inevitable in such a process, and cannot afford a basis to unseat the entire examination,” the court observed.

It said that courts have to be conscious even while issuing notice in similar cases, where lakhs of students are involved. It further observed that the very fact that an examination such as the IIT JEE, which governs entrance to IITs, NITs and other centrally funded technical institutions, may be subject matter of a Court proceeding, is itself a serious issue.

“It also creates uncertainty in the minds of students who attempt the papers. Courts have, therefore, to be extremely careful even while issuing notice in such cases. It is only if the procedure being followed is constitutionally completely unacceptable that such cases deserve issuance of notice,” the court observed.

Counsel for Petitioner: Mr. Arun Sharma, Adv

Counsel for Respondents: Mr. Apoorv Kurup, Ms. Nidhi Mittal, Ms. Gauri Gobardhan, Mr. Akhil Hasija and Ms. Muskaan Gupta, Advs. with Ms. Sarika Soam for NTA

Title: SETU VINIT GOENKA v. NATIONAL TESTING AGENCY & ANR.

Citation: 2024 LiveLaw (Del) 233

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