Bombay High Court denies 154 students’ CET (MBA) re-examination request.

Bombay High Court denies 154 students’ CET (MBA) re-examination request.

Bombay High Court denies 154 students’ CET (MBA) re-examination request.

Today, the Bombay High Court dismissed a petition submitted by 154 students requesting a re-examination of the Maharashtra State Common Entrance Test (CET) for MBA admission. The petition was filed in an attempt to get admission to a graduate business programme.

A division bench consisting of Justices GS Patel and Neela Gokhale observed that out of the one lakh students who participated in the entrance test, only a little bit more than 150 students had lodged a complaint and requested that the entrance test and admission process for the academic year 2023-24 be voided.

The judge who presided over the case noticed that the petition had been submitted by a small group of students, but he or she did not take into account the position of the other candidates who had not sought the court.

It looks as though the petitioners’ overall position is unjust in the extreme. We are being led to believe that the outcomes of the vast majority of students will be put in peril due to the actions of a fraction of one percent of the whole student body. We were only one of 154 pupils who came before them. They recommend taking the complete CET exam once more in its entirety. Nobody gives a second consideration to the hundreds of thousands of other people who took the entrance exam.

The court stated that notwithstanding the fact that the petitioners do not represent all candidates, it is expected that all of those people will suffer as a result of the actions of the present dissatisfied persons without being given even the tiniest possibility of being heard by the others.

The petition was turned down by the court because it did not find any merit in the grounds that were presented, although the court refrained from imposing expenses on the petitioners because the petitioners were students.

“The fact that all of these accusations of structural failures or anomalies are brought to life only after the results have been declared is definitely quite striking. There is nothing of substance that we can discern in the petition at all. On the basis of the facts and the content, we cannot accept it. Due to the fact that the petitioners are students, the court concluded that it would not issue an order to impose costs.

The petitioner students took their concerns to the court regarding the normalisation of marks that had been implemented by the CET cell following the administration of retests to certain of the petitioners.

On July 3, a divided bench of the court dismissed the petitioners’ request for immediate temporary relief and allowed the admissions process to continue, albeit with the proviso that it wait for the conclusion of the appeal.

Advocates SB Talekar contended on behalf of the students that the postgraduate management admission process in the State was flawed due to a lack of openness and unfairness in the manner in which it was conducted. They claimed that this was a violation of state law.

He went on to say that the normalisation procedure was defective because each batch was required to have the same number of pupils enrolled in it.

Advocate General Dr. Birendra Saraf, speaking on behalf of the state of Maharashtra, argued against the petition and stated that the schedule for the examination had been announced in February of this year. Additionally, more than one lakh applicants were split up into four batches, and individual examinations were scheduled for each of those groups.

He went on to say that there were a few problems with the technology used during the first batch, and that after students voiced their displeasure with the situation, they were offered the opportunity to retake the test during the ‘fifth’ and supplementary batch. As a result, there were a total of 11,562 students who showed up for the fifth batch test on May 6; among them were more than 70 of the petitioners who were in front of the court.

The judge was informed by Saraf that the batch in question had its own unique percentile score.

The panel of judges noted that the petitioners did not adequately demonstrate how the normalisation process was unjust. It also stated that courts in India generally respect the authority of the authorities and do not interfere in matters relating to public examinations and the admissions process. This was stated in the document.