Respond to demand of MBA aspirants for retest: HC to CET Cell

The Bombay high court has asked the state CET Cell to explain how it will resolve anomalies in the MBA admissions process. 156 students have filed a petition claiming that the CET was flawed and demanding a fresh test. The court has asked the CET Cell to respond by Monday.

Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Friday asked the state CET Cell to file its response on how it will rationalise the admissions for the MBA course after anomalies were pointed out in the results and admission process.

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The petition was filed by 156 students, who were aggrieved by the haphazard conduction of the CET and the process for normalisation of marks adopted by the Cell after it conducted retest for some students.

The students claimed that as the entire process of conduction of the MBA/MMS CET was vitiated and wrought with errors, the HC should direct the Cell to scrap the results of the CET conducted so far and order a fresh test.

The division bench of justice Gautam Patel and justice Neela Gokhale, while hearing the petition, was informed by advocates Satish Talekar and Madhavi Ayyappan that the students were seeking a retest as the normalisation of marks was not a fair method and they were disadvantaged by it.

The bench was further informed that after the test conducted by the CET Cell in March had been compromised due to questions being leaked as students had appeared for the same question paper at different times, the cell had conducted retest in May for select students.

However, to ensure that there was no difference in the scores of students from the first test and the retest, the Cell had resorted to normalisation of scores in which students who expected better marks secured lesser marks.

The petition stated that as normalisation of marks was not done in a fair manner to ensure that MBA aspirants get a chance to enroll in the top management colleges of their choice, the tests should be reconducted for all aspirants.

After hearing the submissions, the bench expressed its displeasure at the way the entire admission process was being conducted by the CET Cell and asked it to respond by Monday.