HC dismisses petition challenging results of SET

Madras High Court today dismissed over 150 petitions challenging the results of the State Eligibility Test (SET) conducted by Bharathiyar University and the National Eligibility Test (NET) held by University Grants Commission in 2012.
Petitioners had challenged the results on the grounds of a change in the eligibility rules for recruitment of lecturers in colleges and universities in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.
Justice KK Sasidharan said the legality and correctness of the qualifying examination conducted by UGC, reserving the right to fix the final eligibility criteria after declaring the results, had already been decided by Supreme Court.
The judge said that in view of the apex court ruling that there was no illegality in prescribing such conditions, the petitions challenging the UGC and Bharathiyar University eligibility tests were liable to be dismissed.

After the NET and SET results for Junior Research Fellowship and Eligibility for Lecturership in universities and colleges were declared, UGC released a press note saying that in addition to the minimum marks which they were supposed to obtain, candidates were also required to obtain aggregate marks of 65 per cent for the general category, 60 per cent for OBC and 55 per cent for SC/STs and persons with disabilities.
The petitioners moved court saying that the eligibility criteria was changed after holding the examination and sought a direction to UGC and Bharathiyar University to declare that they had passed in eligibility test.

The judge said that the issue had already been settled by the apex court, which had upheld the eligibility criteria as adopted by UGC.