Madras HC questions CBSE on -35 cut-off mark for JEE

Seeking a reply from the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development and Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), the Madras High Court on Friday granted three weeks time to the Centre along with the CBSE to file their counter-affidavits to a public interest litigation petition.

The PIL questioned the correctness of allowing physically challenged candidates who scored as low as -35 marks in Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Mains 2018 to write JEE Advanced.

During the argument, the First Division Bench of Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice PT Asha expressed surprise over the claim of negative marks having been fixed as the qualifying marks to take up advanced examinations and inquired the logic behind permitting such a practice.

The PIL petition was filed by S Sudhakar, an industrialist from Coimbatore who contended that the CBSE method in awarding marks and determining the cut-off was flawed. He also claimed that the qualifying marks were on a declining trend year after year and added that the cut-off mark for physically challenged candidates was just one mark during the JEE held in 2017 while it had come down to -35 this year.

The petitioner’s counsel pointed out that 10.43 lakh students took JEE Mains in April this year at 1,613 centres in 112 cities across the country of which 2.31 lakh got selected for JEE Advanced conducted for admission to undergraduate programmes in Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the selection was based on answers given to 90 objective type questions carrying four marks for each correct answer and one negative mark for every incorrect answer.