The Kerala High Court on Friday dismissed pleas for a directive to the State government to admit students to engineering courses on the basis of the marks secured by candidates in the entrance examination conducted by the Commissioner of Entrance Examinations (CEE).
Justice P.B. Suresh Kumar, however, directed the CEE to extend the deadline for uploading the marks to enable those who wrote the improvement examinations to post their marks. The court ordered that the time should be extended till the publication of the result of the improvement examinations and by two days after the publication.
Some of the students sought an extension of the time for uploading the marks of their improvement examinations. The portal for uploading the marks would be closed on September 17. As a result, they would not be able to upload improved marks on the site, they said.
The petitions, challenging the government decision to take into account the marks secured by students in class XII examinations along with the entrance examination marks, for admission to engineering courses were filed by Kerala CBSE School Management Association, Association of Schools for the Indian School Certificate, and a few CBSE and ICSE students.
They had contended that because of the COVID-19 pandemic, CBSE and ICSE could not conduct final examinations for classes X and XII. Therefore, the only method to evaluate the students for admission to the professional courses was to take into account the marks secured by them in the entrance examination alone instead of sharing the marks of the qualifying examinations in equal percentages.
