The Madras High Court on Tuesday dismissed a large batch of writ petitions by aspiring teachers challenging the results of the State Eligibility Test (SET) conducted by Bharathiyar University and the National Eligibility Test (NET) by the UGC in 2012.
The petitioners primarily contended that the eligibility criteria was changed after conducting the qualifying examination for determining eligibility for recruitment of lecturers in universities and colleges in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.
The test consisted of three papers of objective type. Candidates should obtain minimum marks separately in the papers. The UGC notified that only such candidates who secured the minimum required marks separately will be considered for preparation of final results. However, it was indicated that the final qualifying criteria for Junior Research Fellowship and Eligibility for Lectureship would be decided by the UGC before declaring the results.
The challenge was primarily against the unilateral decision by UGC to change the eligibility criteria after holding the examination.
The petitioners wanted the UGC and the university to declare that the candidates who had secured the minimum aggregate marks had passed the eligibility test.
Justice K.K.Sasidharan said the SET was in accordance with the UGC norms for conducting NET.
While issuing the notification, Bharathiyar University had also indicated that the final qualifying criteria would be fixed after declaring the results. Since the legality and correctness of the qualifying examination conducted by the UGC reserving the right to fix the final eligibility criteria after declaring the results had already been decided by the Supreme Court in a case and in view of the finding that there was no illegality in prescribing such condition, the present writ petitions challenging the very same procedure adopted for determining the eligibility by UGC and the Bharathiyar University were liable to be dismissed.
