Bombay High Court Refuses To Quash Admission Process For MBA/MMS Courses Through CET 2023

A division bench of Justice GS Patel and Justice Neela Kedar Gokhale rejected a writ petition filed by 154 students against the admission process, observing that this is an attempt to cancel the exam after participating in the retest (fifth slot) and not obtaining desired results.

“At least for those who opted for retest due to technical glitches there was an attempt to improve their percentile and that not having worked they challenged the results and the process. Advocate General Saraf is not wrong in his contention that this is an attempt to cancel the exam after those who took slot 5 exam gambled on it and lost…No candidate has right to demand that normalization, which is necessary, either not be done at all or be done at his convenience”, the court observed.

The exam was conducted online by the State CET Cell in four slots of 25,000 to 30,000 candidates each. Candidates alleged that there were several discrepancies during the exam. Some candidates allegedly received 180 minutes instead of the allocated 150 minutes, certain exam centres allegedly had inadequate computer facilities, some candidates allegedly faced delays in entering the exam centres, and there were even allegations of paper leakage. A writ petition was filed before the High Court regarding this, which was disposed of as infructuous after the CET Cell submitted that it would conduct a retest.

On April 5, 2023, the CET Cell issued a notice declaring that a retest would be conducted due to certain issues during the initial examination. The retest was to be held for two categories of candidates. The first category included those who couldn't complete the exam due to technical glitches, and for them, the retest was optional. The second category consisted of candidates who received 180 minutes instead of 150, and their results were cancelled, making the retest mandatory for them.

The retest, considered as the fifth slot, was conducted on May 6, 2023. The CET cell issued a document outlining the normalization process for the results. Results were declared on June 3, 2023. On June 22, 2023, one Jay Rikame along with 153 other candidates filed the present petition challenging the admission process.

Advocate SB Talekar for the petitioners contended that the document prescribing the normalization method was issued on June 2, 2023, after the retest had already taken place. However, the court dismissed this argument, observing “no prejudice is caused to any candidate who appeared for the exam irrespective of when the normalization process is announced.”

Talekar also claimed that the normalization process was flawed as there had to be an equal number of students in every batch. Advocate General Birendra Saraf submitted that the results of unaffected candidates from the first slot were separate from the fifth slot, as roughly 11,000 candidates of the fifth slot got a second opportunity. The court observed that there is nothing to indicate that the normalization process was unfair.

Talekar also relied on Rule 8 of the Maharashtra Unaided Private Professional Educational Institutions (Regulation of Admission to the Full Time Professional Undergraduate Technical Courses) Rules, 2017 which pertains to the preparation of the merit list. He said that raw scores were never declared, and merit list was prepared based on percentile scores, violating Rule 8(3). However, the court rejected this argument, stating that the notice on normalization clearly outlined the use of percentile score, and the authority conducting the exam had the right to decide the normalization process. The court further explained that in large-scale exams, normalization is necessary as papers have varying difficulty levels.

The court noted that only a small fraction, approximately 0.12% or less, of the total candidates filed the petition challenging the admission process. "Of the roughly 1.2 lakh candidates, only 154 have come to us. No thought is spared to those who appeared for exams but have no complaints. We are expected to quash the process at the instance of disgruntled candidates that too without joining or giving opportunity of being heard to hundreds of thousand other candidates", the court observed.

The court emphasized that such selection processes require a high level of expertise, and the authority's judgment should not be substituted with the court's judgment. The court cited Apex Court judgments and said that unsuccessful candidates are never allowed to challenge the process at a later stage.

The court dismissed the petition, observing that it lacked substance. However, it refrained from imposing any costs on the petitioners, considering they are students.

Case no. – WP/7774/2023 [Civil]

Case Title – Jay Pramod Rikame and Ors. v. State of Maharashtra