The Kerala High Court on Thursday reserved its verdict on a few writ petitions seeking a directive to the State government to give admission to professional courses for the academic year 2021 in the State on the basis of the marks secured by candidates in the entrance examination conducted by the Commissioner of Entrance Examinations.
Justice P.B. Suresh Kumar reserved the order after the conclusion of the arguments on the petitions.
Suman Chakravarthy, counsel for one of the students submitted that the standardisation of marks for admission to professional courses was not practical in the present scenario as no examination for Class 12 was conducted except by the State government. Therefore, marks obtained in the Plus Two examinations should not be reckoned his time around. In fact, students who wrote the State Class 12 examinations had secured higher marks because of the liberal valuation, the counsel submitted.
According to Kerala CBSE School Managements Association, another petitioner, to give equal opportunity to all the students, the marks secured in the entrance examination alone should be taken as the basis for admission to professional courses. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, no final examination for CBSE schools and ICSE schools could be conducted in 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 examination in equal percentage.
