The ongoing admissions process to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) has been obstructed, with the Madras high court on Friday ordering IIT-Kanpur, which conducted the entrance tests, to redraw the rank list for Joint Entrance Examination-Advanced exam held in May, results for which were announced in June.

While students are panicking as this ruling could mean that the first two rounds of seat allocation at IITs will be considered null and void, authorities from IIT-Kanpur have requested students to stay calm as they have filed an appeal at the divisional bench of the court, hoping for relief from redoing the entire admission process.

Justice S Vaidyanathan gave the direction on July 2 on a petition from L Lakshmi Sree, represented by her father, seeking a direction to quash the clarification issued by IIT-Kanpur against its original instructions given during the May 20 exam.

Allowing the plea, the judge said candidates who assigned numerical values as answers, as per the original instructions, will have to be given preference over those who, according to IIT, also gave correct answers by rounding off the numerical values to one decimal place or without any decimal notation.

“By giving such a preference, the total numbers of candidates who have been selected are not going to be affected. Instead, their ranking alone will be changed,” he said.

A day after over 1.5 lakh students appeared for the JEE Advanced examination, IIT-Kanpur had released a statement saying that students’ answers for questions which did not have multiple choices will be evaluated depending on the question. This year, not only was the exam completely computer-based, students had pointed how the pattern of questions too was different with almost 45% of the 54 questions in Paper I and II having numerical answer-type questions, with no multiple choices.

Originally, the exam conducting authority had instructed candidates to answer in correct numerical value in decimal notation, rounded off to the second decimal place. It was made clear that full marks will be given only if answered as per these instructions. However, the statement by IIT-Kanpur a day after the JEE-Adv exam said, “For numerical answer-type questions, the numerical value entered by the candidate will be evaluated. Wherever applicable, depending on the question, answers will be evaluated by checking whether the answer entered by the candidate falls within a range of two values of the range depending on the question.”

Examples given by IIT-Kanpur were that if an answer is the number 11, all answers entered as 11, 11.0 or 11.00 will be correct, if an answer is 11.5, then all answers entered as 11.5, or 11.50 will be correct and if an answer is 11.36777777…, all answers entered within a specified range, such as from 11.36 to 11.37 (this range is shown for illustration purposes only), will be correct.

The Madras HC on Friday maintained that IIT-Kanpur should stick to their original rules and regulations and give preference to students who had strictly complied with the rule and answered such questions with numerical answers rounded out to the second decimal place.

(with inputs from PTI)

Original rule

The exam conducting authority had instructed candidates to answer in correct numerical value in decimal notation, rounded off to the second decimal place. It was made clear that full marks will be given only if answered as per these instructions.

Clarification released in June

For numerical answer-type questions, the numerical value entered by the candidate will be evaluated. Wherever applicable, depending on the question, answers will be evaluated by checking whether the answer entered by the candidate falls within a range of two values of the range depending on the question.

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