Image Credit: Live Law
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday firmly declined to stay the Kerala High Court’s order regarding this year’s Kerala Engineering Architecture Medical (KEAM) entrance exam admissions, allowing the process to proceed based on the revised rank list.
Earlier, both the Kerala High Court single bench and subsequently a division bench dismissed the state government’s appeal challenging the single bench’s verdict, which had annulled the KEAM rank list published on July 1. The high court ruled that the last-minute change in eligibility criteria was unjustified and directed authorities to revert to the original prospectus and issue a revised rank list.
The controversy arose after the Kerala government issued a Government Order (GO) on July 1—the same day the rank list was published—altering the evaluation formula. The amendment changed the ratio of marks allocation for Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry from 1:1:1 to 5:3:2, disproportionately affecting students from CBSE and ICSE boards, who argued that the change was arbitrary and biased.
Following the division bench’s verdict, the Pinarayi Vijayan government chose not to appeal further and began proceeding with the allotment process. Meanwhile, a group of Kerala syllabus students approached the Supreme Court seeking a stay on the high court’s decision.
While the Supreme Court refused to stay the order, it agreed to hear the “question of law” concerning the authority to change the formula for standardising marks across different education boards. Despite urgent pleas from the petitioners’ counsel for an early hearing, the court scheduled the matter for four weeks later, directing the state to file its response.
The court was informed that the state government had decided against filing any appeal to avoid delaying the admission process. The government’s counsel stated, “Let me make it clear, we wanted to file an appeal, but we didn’t want to upset the process.”
Thus, the admissions will continue under the revised rank list, with the legal question to be examined next month after the admission process has progressed.
With IANS inputs