New Delhi: The Supreme Court today agreed to hear on Friday a plea by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) seeking more time to re-conduct All India Pre-Medical Entrance Test (AIPMT) for 2015-16. The CBSE today said it was not possible to hold exams in four weeks, as directed by the apex court in June 15 ruling. A bench of justices RK Agrawal and AM Sapre decided to take up the CBSE petition after Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar mentioned the matter before it.
The Supreme Court on Monday cancelled the 2015 All India Pre-Medical Test (AIPMT) conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education following the leak of the question paper and circulation of answer keys through electronic devices at different examination centres across 10 states. In a major relief for lakhs of aspirants, the apex court has now asked the CBSE to re-conduct of the examination within four weeks.
Kumar said the apex court that it is impossible to re-conduct the exam within the timeframe decided by the Supreme Court. He said that the CBSE was overburdened with work of conducting seven exams simultaneously and it needed at least three months time to conduct the exam afresh.
In a major verdict, the Supreme Court had on Monday scrapped the AIPMT-2015 exam following the leak of its question paper and circulation of the answer keys through electronic devices at different examination centres in 10 states. The AIPMT was conducted for 15 percent all-India quota seats.
A vacation bench of Justice RK Agrawal and Justice Amitava Roy, while cancelling the examination and directing its re-conduct within four weeks, had said: “We are aware that the abrogation of the examination would result in some inconvenience to all concerned and that same extra time would be consumed for holding a fresh examination with renewed efforts.”
While directing the re-conduct of the entire test, the court had rejected the CBSE’s plea not to scrap the test as it would affect 6.30 lakh students and also the re-conduct of the examination could not be completed before four months.
The CBSE, however, had opposed the contentions seeking cancellation of the test, saying, “6.3 lakh students cannot be made to take the exam afresh when only 44 students have been found involved in taking benefits through unfair means.” Earlier, the vacation bench had asked the Haryana Police to file a fresh report indicating the number of beneficiaries of the alleged irregularities in the pre-medical examination.
It had also asked police to identify as many candidates as possible who had been benefited from the alleged leak. The CBSE was to declare the results of AIPMT, taken by over six lakh students, on June 5. The court had said, “The bigger issue is that the sanctity of the examination is under suspicion. We want to be doubly sure that there is no alternative but to order re-conduct of the exam,” adding that it did not want to take a decision “in haste”.
Bureau Report
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