Gujarat High Court rejects PIL on JEE 2013

The Gujarat High Court rejected a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) on demanding of its introduction of Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for engineering degree courses admissions from academic year 2013.

Earlier, Gujarat State High Court issued a notices to the central and state education department as well as the education board over a PIL demanding that the authorities should start Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) from 2014 not from the next academic year 2013.

The PIL has sought directions to the state government that it should defer its decision of offering the mandatory JEE to 2014, and it should not start from this academic year.

Initially, government declared that, the students who were all clear the board examination in science stream and aspire to take admission in engineering courses must have to take JEE, which is the common engineering entrance exam.

Vidhyarthi Hit Rakshak Samiti association had urged the court that the decision to make JEE compulsory from the next year could harm the future of nearly 1.7 lakh students, who may pass the board examination in the year 2013.

The petitioner also claimed that the students who cleared the board exams may not find enough time to prepare for the JEE. Even study material for the JEE is not available in Gujarati. The syllabus for the JEE is different form the Gujarat Common Entrance Test (GUJCET), which is the mandatory test for the students to take the after the board exam for the professional courses.

In a counterargument, the government said that there is not much difference in the syllabuses and the decision to introduce JEE has been taken with a view to uplifting the standard of education to what is required for the premier technical institutes.

The petitioner's lawyer submitted during the hearing that the state government has taken dual stand over the issue of entrance examinations, as in a similar litigation pending before the Supreme Court questioning mandatory NEET for admission in undergraduate medical courses, the govt opposes introduction of the test at this time.

After conclusion of hearing, the division bench of Chief Justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya and Justice J B Pardiwala upheld the state government's contention.

The Judges also criticized the request for interruption saying that advertisements in this regard were published in August last year. The ratio of 80:20 for intake admission of students from Gujarat and outside can be maintained.