SANCHIT BANSAL Vs. JOINT ADMISSION BOARD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Heard. Leave granted.

(2.) The first Appellant is the son of second Appellant who is a Professor in the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT for short), Kharagpur. Admission to undergraduate courses in fifteen II Ts as also IT--BHU and ISM, Dhanbad is through the Common Entrance Examination known as the Joint Entrance Examination (for short IIT-JEE). The said examination is considered to be the toughest entrance examination in India, with more than 50 candidates vying for each seat in the said examination. IIT-JEE is conducted every year by a different IIT on a rotation basis and is supervised by the Joint Admission Board (JAB or the Board), the first Respondent herein. The first Appellant appeared in the IIT-JEE 2006, as a general category candidate. He secured 75 marks in Methamatics, 104 marks in Physics and 52 marks in Chemistry, aggregating to 231. The Board had fixed the cut off marks for admission as 37 for Maths, 48 for Physics and 55 for Chemistry and the aggregate cut off marks as 154. As first Appellant did not secure the minimum of 55 marks in chemistry he was not qualified, even though his aggregate in the three subjects was very high.

(3.) The second Appellant wrote a letter dated 5.9.2006 to all the IIT Chairmen/Directors alleging anomalies and inherent contradictions in the selection process. He alleged that the cut off marks were fixed arbitrarily and with malafides in a manner that a student such as the first Appellant with 231 marks was found to be not qualified whereas a student who got aggregate marks of 154 was found to have qualified. The Appellants also filed several applications under the Right to Information Act 2005 and collected considerable data. The Appellants claim that when they sought information about the procedure for computation of cut off marks for JEE 2006 the organising Chairman, JEE 2006 gave two different versions at different points of time.