The Delhi High Court has refused to interfere with the authorities’ decision not to hold re-examination of JEE (Advanced) for the candidates who could not attempt the entrance test due to their COVID-19 positive status.
Justice Jayant Nath said it is a settled legal position that normally, it would be wise and safe for the courts to leave the decisions of academic matters to experts who are more familiar with the problems they face than the courts generally. The high court dismissed a petition by an IIT aspirant, who had obtained a rank in the top 96,187 general category candidates in the JEE (Mains) examination held in September this year but could not sit for the JEE (Advanced) examination on September 27 as he tested COVID-19 positive on September 22.
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The results were declared on October 5. He said he wrote to the Organising Chairman of IIT-Delhi, explaining his position and seeking accommodation/relaxation to another date for taking this examination. He also contacted the examination centre in Jaipur where he was informed that there were no arrangements for a COVID-19 positive student to appear in the examination.
The plea said the eligibility criteria for JEE (Advanced) is that a candidate can appear only two times in two consecutive years. Hence, he will lose a chance of getting admission into prestigious institutions like IITs. He pleaded that separate arrangements in the form of isolation centres for candidates who tested positive for COVID-19 should have been made and implemented at centres, as it was done in other examinations like CLAT 2020.
