Iron out IIT grace mark flaws quickly

The Supreme Court has restrained all the Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) from conducting counselling or admitting students subsequent to the Joint Entrance Examination this year. The stay also affects admissions to NITs, IIITs and government-funded technical institutions. This puts on hold the admission process affecting more than 36,000 students in 97 institutes who had headed the list of aspirants after taking the advanced test. The stay comes at an awkward time after the admissions have been decided upon already. Also, considerable suspense is being added to the fate of other aspirants who had finished close to those who had qualified but who feel a genuine reason to feel aggrieved on the flaws in the Hindi-medium question papers, which led to the awarding of 18 grace marks to aspirants across the board on the grounds that it would be difficult at this juncture to find out which candidates out of 2.5 lakh students took the test in Hindi.

The IIT entrance tests have always been held up as a model of objective assessment of students offering the best insight into the mental acuity of those who are to enter the premier engineering institutes. It is ironical that the process is being questioned now about its fairness because of the bonus marks awarded arbitrarily. The top court hearing is to come up soon enough and if it rules quickly on a way out of the impasse there may not be too much disruption to the academic year that is to begin soon. The point is the methodology of the evaluation system should not have been allowed to come in the way of assessment. It is logical that only those who attempted the two wrong questions should have been given the grace marks rather than everyone who took the exam, thus throwing the assessment and the ranking list out of kilter. There is a precedent for this in a 2005 ruling by the top court that bonus marks for wrong questions can be awarded only to those who attempted the question.

Students are not to be blamed if they feel aggrieved over issues regarding question papers of national tests as their careers are at stake at a juncture when they have to choose their professional path of study. A similar situation would have prevailed after the NEET test too if not for the top court ruling that the counselling and admission should go on. The point is these entrance tests for professional course should be set with greater care. And it is even more important to ensure the assessment process is equitable and cannot be questioned in a court of law as is the lot of the IIT-JEE (advanced) test this academic season. The confusion caused allows the play of uncertainty in the precious lives of talented young people whose lives are in the balance.