BREAKING: Kerala High Court Upholds Order Cancelling KEAM Result; Dismisses State's Appeal

The Kerala High Court on Thursday (July 9) upheld a single judge's order which set aside the Kerala Engineering Architecture and Medical (KEAM) exam results.The court thus dismissed the state government's appeal against the order, adding that it was after considering the rival contentions that the single judge had "interfered with the government order" and disposed of the writ petitions with observations and directions.A division bench of Justice Anil K Narendran and Justice Muralee Krishna S in its order dictated: "Having considered pleadings and material on record and submissions, we notice that the process for entrance examination for admission to professional courses in year 2025 commenced based on the prospectus published by the State...After issuance of the prospectus, the decision was taken, based on the request made by the Commissioner of Entrance Examinations, which was made even prior to the issuance of the prospectus, in November 2024, thereby a modified standardization process was adopted for fixing the rank of candidates. Though various arguments have been advanced, we find that the report of the standardization review committee which has been relied on by counsel on both sides would make it explicit that the committee has opined that introducing a new formula or making any modification to the existing one would be possible only after thorough and detailed study...The committee concluded that implementing a new formula by this year is not feasible however the committee recommended that for present year number of years be reduced to five for calculation of standard deviation. The committee suggested to revise the existing 50:50 ratio currently applied to a new ratio of 60:40...A reading of the report of standardization review committee, which was relied on by the Advocate General, would not in any manner support the decision now taken by the government for adopting an entirely different standardization procedure". The bench upheld the decision of the single judge and said that it "finds no ground to interfere" with reasoning of the single judge. The court thus dismissed the appeal by state. "We will deal with all decisions in judgement," the court orally said. Disparity to state syllabus students was sought to be remedied through amended prospectusDuring the hearing the advocate general appearing for State government argued, "Originally, equal weightage was given to all subjects. As per amended prospectus, weightage was given in the ratio of 5:3:2 for Maths, Physics and Chemistry". "Formula for standardisation was approved by the expert committee. The disparity to state syllabus students was sought to be remedied by the amendment to the prospectus," he said. He referred to a report submitted by the expert committee constituted for reviewing standardisation with respect to the exam and said,"Option 3 among the 5 options" submitted by the expert committee was selected by the Govt. and prospectus was amended.He submitted that the new formula was adopted to remedy an injustice. In the appeal, the government has stated that it is empowered to make modifications, additions and deletions to the prospectus as per Clause 1.6 of the prospectus, contrary to the finding of the Single Judge. The amendment was made since it was found to be absolutely necessary to offer a level playing field for all the aspirants and only after the expert committee reviewed the standardization process, the state government has stated.It is also stated in the appeal that standardisation formula and its modification come within the domain of the State government and the Single Bench ought not to have interfered in the same.The appeal also challenged the finding of the Single Judge that the formula was changed only to benefit the students from the Kerala stream when the authorities found that these students did not perform well in the entrance examination. In appeal, the Government has defended the action taken as bona fide and intended to remove the disparity created with the earlier formula.It is stated in the appeal that no comparison was made by the Government or the Commissioner of Entrance Examinations to see if any group of students were benefitted or adversely affected.Change in prospectus at this stage wrongMeanwhile a counsel appearing for one of the respondents argued, "Entrance exam was scheduled in April in the meanwhile, plus 12 results was there. After the results came, options were called for all the candidates to upload their marks so that normalisation process could commence...this happened because till 2011, admissions were purely on basis of entrance examinations". "There were then allegations that students of CBSE and ICSE streams would get better ranks...core subjects were initially Maths, Physics and Chemistry. Marks were used in ratio of 50:50. Since there were different streams a method was used for normalising marks for which expert committee was appointed. Method was being practised till last year. New...

BREAKING: Kerala High Court Upholds Order Cancelling KEAM Result; Dismisses State's Appeal

K. Salma Jennath

Tags