CHENNAI: A batch of public interest litigation petitions, challenging the December 6, 2006 notification of the State Government abolishing common entrance test (CET) for admission to professional colleges, has been filed in the Madras High Court.

Maintaining that the State lacked legislative competence to enact the Tamil Nadu Admission in Professional Institution Education Act 2006, the petitioners sought a direction to the Government to issue application forms and conduct admission process for the academic year 2007-08 by conducting the CET.

The petitioners also wanted the court to restrain the Government from in any manner selecting or admitting students to professional colleges without conducting the CET to determine the inter se merit of all Board students.

Pointing out that the legislation had not obtained Presidential assent so far, the petitioners said senior advocate K.M. Vijayan had already brought the matter to the notice of the President in a letter dated January 1, 2007.

The impugned legislation provides for admission based only on the qualifying examination marks, ignoring the requirement of conducting the CET, they said, adding, "Entry 66, List 1 of the VII Schedule categorically gives exclusive jurisdiction for the Central Government in respect of the laws relating to the professional education." Even a Presidential assent could not give a State law an overriding power, they added.

Standard of evaluation

As for Section 5 of the impugned legislation, which provided for normalisation of marks for a non-Tamil Nadu State Board student, the petitioners said it went against the principles of standard deviation, and added that it would not help authorities arrive at a uniform standard of evaluation between two sets of students from various boards.

Various court orders had made the CET a mandatory requirement for admission to professional courses, they said.

On the delay in the announcement of admission process, the petitioners said the suspense as to whether the students would be required to write the CET or not was adding to the pressure of students. Referring to various court orders, they said in spite of all legal decisions rendered in the matter so far, the State Government had "impertinently" passed the legislation.

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