HC reserves order on plea for scrapping of IP univ's MBBS test

Delhi High Court today reserved judgement on an MBBS aspirant's plea for fresh examination for admission to the medical course in the Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University here on grounds of discrepancies in the questions and answer keys of the test held last month.
The university, while opposing the candidate's argument, said there was no arbitrariness or malafide on its part as an expert panel had recommended re-evaluation after examining the discrepancies.
The varsity also submitted before Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw that merely because the rank of the aspirant-petitioner fell 77 positions after the re-evaluation, the process followed by it cannot be faulted.

The court, thereafter, reserved its judgement on the plea of the candidate, Tripti Jha, after it concluded hearing arguments of both sides.
Jha's lawyers contended since there were discrepancies with respect to 19 of the 200 questions, some of them being wrong and some marked on basis of wrong answer keys, therefore the Common Entrance Test (CET) should be conducted again.
They argued that the university did not follow proper procedure while inviting applications from students to examine the answer keys, as this step was not notified on the website to allow all candidates to participate in the exercise.

However, the university said after it issued the revised merit list on June 20, it had invited all candidates to come and inspect their answer sheets and the answer keys, but the complainant did not avail of this opportunity.

The court also observed that Jha should have inspected her answer sheets and the keys to check whether the revised answer keys for 11 chemistry questions were correct or not.
The varsity earlier said the experts panel had found that answers to 11 Chemistry questions were incorrectly indicated in the answer keys for all test booklets, and based on its recommendation, re-evaluation across the board was conducted.
It also said in its affidavit that the panel had also found seven incorrect questions which were dropped and 21 marks were awarded to all candidates.
Jha in her plea sought that the counselling be carried out as per the initial merit list of May 27 in which she had a rank of 155. Her rank had dropped to 232 after re-evaluation.

In her plea, Jha also alleged that re-evaluation was done in a "shady manner" without providing "any notice/information" to the candidates. On June 26, the university had said the counselling would not be held till June 29.