All pending IIT petitions transferred to Supreme Court

Reacting to a petition filed by the organising chairman of Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) (advanced) 2013, IIT-Delhi, the Supreme Court ordered the transfer of all petitions related to the IIT admissions that were pending in the Andhra Pradesh High Court to itself.

The Supreme Court today directed transferring to its bench all petitions relating to admissions in Indian Institute of Technology pending in the Andhra Pradesh High Court.

"The transfer petition is allowed," a bench comprising Chief Justice P Sathasivam and Justice Ranjan Gogoi said.

The petition was filed by the organising chairman of Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) (advanced) 2013, IIT-Delhi, seeking that all petitions pending in the Andhra Pradesh High Court on admissions to IIT be shifted to the apex court.

An advocate associated with the matter said there are more petitions pending in other High Courts and applications would be filed for their transfer also to the apex court.

Earlier on July 12, the apex court had stayed all proceedings related to admissions in IIT in the Andhra Pradesh High Court which had directed the premier institute not to fill four seats which were offered to students from the state but were denied on the ground of poor percentile.

A bench comprising justices K S Radhakrishnan and Pinaki Chandra Ghose had issued notices and sought response from those candidates on whose petition the High Court had passed the order on July 8.

However, another bench of justices H L Dattu and Dipak Misra on July 11 had refused to pass interim order on a plea challenging the policy for deciding the merit list of students for admission in government-funded engineering colleges based on Class 12 board marks and the JEE.

It had agreed to hear the plea of parents of engineering aspirants, who challenged the new "normalisation" policy.

The bench had said it would hear the petition on merit only after being satisfied that the education policy violates fundamental rights of students.

From this year students are to be selected based on their performance in the JEE and the marks they got in the Class 12 board exams.

Sixty per cent weightage would be given to marks obtained in JEE and 40 per cent to the board exam results.

Around 25,000 students are selected every year for all the 30 National Institutes of Technology (NITs), Indian Institutes of Information Technology and other top technology schools, except the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).

Photograph: Rediff Archives