Supreme Court refuses to postpone GATE

New Delhi: The Supreme Court has turned down a plea seeking the postponement of the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering Exam (GATE) scheduled to conduct on February 5, PTI reported.

The top court bench of Justices DY Chandrachud, Surya Kant and Vikram Nath said that postponing the exam just 48 hours before its scheduled time could invite chaos and uncertainty among candidates. It said it could not gamble with students' careers since they had prepared for the exam.

Further, the court said that deciding on conducting exams is a matter of academic policy, and the court could not intervene. The court said that though there were nine lakh students who applied to appear for the exam, 20,000 had signed the online petition for postponement.

The plea, that sought postponement of the exam, had mentioned that nine lakh people are appearing for the exam along 200 centres, but the authorities have not issued any Covid-19 appropriate guidelines for the event. The top court had agreed on Wednesday that it would hear the plea.

The GATE tests students on their understanding of various undergraduate subjects. It caters for students as a qualification for admission in a masters programme while some Public Sector Undertakings recruits people on the exam scores.