The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Court won't order retest in TNPCEE subjects

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jun 08, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Court won't order retest in TNPCEE subjects

By A. Subramani

CHENNAI, JUNE 7. The Madras High Court today firmly indicated that it would not order re-examination in any subject in the Tamil Nadu Professional Courses Entrance Examination (TNPCEE), which was marred by deletion of 22 `ambiguous questions.'

Justice Prafulla Kumar Misra, hearing hundreds of writ petitions from students and parents, made this observation during arguments by several senior counsel, including K.M. Vijayan, T.R. Rajagopal, K. Duraisamy, and advocate R. Viduthalai, besides senior counsel for Anna University, G. Masilamani. Arguments will continue on Wednesday.

The consensus, after most petitioner's advocates wound up their submissions, seems to veer around awarding marks to all correct answers, even if a particular question had more than one correct answer.

This, said Mr. Viduthalai, is possible only if the university admitted that there was more than one correct answer.

In case of a dispute, it shall be referred to an expert committee, he said. Reiterating his argument that the prescribed textbook alone should be considered a conclusive proof and basis of judging an answer correct, he said if a particular question was omitted or deleted, marks also should be deleted instead of they being `proportionately distributed' to other questions.

However, Mr. Masilamani said that there were several streams of education, including the State and Central Board syllabi, the Anglo-Indian stream and even the Andhra Board syllabus, and said the TNPCEE was a common test with questions and answers drawn from all these textbooks. Deleting marks along with the questions would affect the balance between the academic and entrance examination marks.

Earlier, Mr. Vijayan came out with a set of suggestions, including conducting re-examination in Physical Sciences alone. The court must ensure that the university valued every correct answer.

When he said that disputed questions alone should be referred to an experts committee, Mr. Justice Misra wanted to know how this committee would be different. Counsel said it would function better as it would be under the direct supervision of the court.

However, the judge said that even if a new committee was formed, he would have to ask only the university to nominate names to the panel.

If a panel was formed, the petitioners' advocates wanted the job to be entrusted with only qualified and efficient Plus Two teachers, who were `directly dealing with the prescribed syllabus'.

Mr. Vijayan suggested that the university take only the qualifying marks in the Plus Two examination for engineering admission this year.

However, Mr. Justice Misra dismissed it saying "that is not a solution, and it cannot be accepted." Mr. Masilamani also opposed the proposal. Counsel too pointed out that there would be `huge recast of rankings' if new marks were added to the existing list. Though it would have significant repercussions, there would not be any problem as the university was yet to release the rank list, they said.

Mr. Justice Misra asked the university to take cognisance of all the suggestions and come out with an appropriate answer on Wednesday.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu