HC allows admissions to MBA courses from July 7

Bombay High Court allows admission process for MBA courses to start from July 7, subject to outcome of petition by students questioning normalization of marks.

Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Monday allowed the admission process for Master of Business Administration (MBA) courses in the state to start from July 7, but clarified that the admissions would be subject to the outcome of a petition filed by more than 150 students. The students in the petition questioned the state CET cell’s method for normalisation of marks.

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The HC was informed that there were anomalies in the method for normalisation of marks while declaring the results of MBA-CET. The students had claimed that they were put at a disadvantage due to the normalisation process and got lesser marks than they had expected.

The division bench of justice Gautam Patel and justice Neela Gokhale, while hearing the petition, was informed by advocate general Birendra Saraf that some of the petitioners were from batch 1 of the five batches that had appeared for the CET in rescheduled test in May. They had approached the HC hoping to undo the results of the retests after their first test had been wrought with problems.

Saraf further informed the bench that a total of 11,562 aspirants had appeared for the retest on May 6, however, as the results declared on June 23 were not as per their expectations, they want the entire process to be scrapped and have a fresh CET conducted for all the one lakh students. Saraf submitted that it would not be possible as it would take two to three months and would delay the admission process, which was to commence from July 7.

The MBA CET was held in March this year. The CET Cell had formed four batches for attempting the test. However, aspirants from batch 1 had faced problems due to technical glitches and had approached the HC seeking a fair attempt at the test. The CET Cell had received 30,000 grievances and hence decided to conduct a fresh test which was attended by 11,562 aspirants on May 6.

After the results were declared on June 23, some of the aspirants who took the retest approached the HC, claiming that their scores had dipped over what they had secured in the first test due to the method adopted by the Cell for normalisation of scores. The CET Cell had resorted to the normalisation of the scores process to ensure that the results of aspirants in either batch were affected.

The aspirants had, however, informed the bench through advocates Satish Talekar and Madhavi Ayyappan that the normalisation of scores had reduced the score of the petitioners and as the entire MBA CET was flawed in many ways and, therefore, it should be scrapped and a fresh CET should be conducted for all aspirants.

After hearing the submissions, the bench sought to know from the CET Cell whether the normalisation process was valid. Saraf submitted that the demand of the petitioner was not valid, as they had waited for the June 23 results and after they secured a lower percentile, they approached the HC. He added that if they were aggrieved by the process from the initial round of tests, they should have raised the demand earlier.

The bench, however, held that it was concerned for the students and as admissions were to commence from July 7, it wanted the CET Cell to file an additional affidavit in response to the variation in the normalisation of marks for different batches and held that the admissions would continue as per the schedule, however, the same would be subject to the outcome of the petition.

The bench posted the hearing to July 10.