PIL DUE ON AMBIGOUS JEE INSTRUCTIONS, FINALLY ARRIVES

JEE-2010 was not the first time that ambiguous instructions created confusion for the candidates. A close look at the JEE since 2006, when questions were first made available, reveals that it has been quiet frequent.

In fact, senior lawyer Prashant Bhushan, who is arguing a PIL on anomalies in the JEE, says he has been receiving a number of phone calls from parents and students who claim they did not get the expected result.

“Our plea is that candidates should be allowed a carbon copy of the answer sheet that they can take out. After the JEE, IIT should provide the answer key so that a student knows exactly how much he is going to score,” he says.

Ambiguous instructions relate to Multiple Choice Questions which have one or more correct answers without having any negative marking for selecting a wrong choice.

In 2006, questions carrying 72 marks had one or more correct answers without attracting any negative marking for a wrong choice. In 2007, such questions rose to 108 marks. In 2008, there was a marginal decline to 102 marks. In 2009 and 2010, questions carrying 96 and 93 marks, respectively, had oneor more correct answers without any negative marks.

In fact, after 2008 JEE, IIT itself published the questions and the answer key. It was found that for many questions all the options were correct. Therefore, it was possible for a candidate to get full marks by darkening all the bubbles.

When the matter came to light after this year’s JEE, IIT-Madras, which conducted this year’s JEE, told the Delhi High Court, which is seized of a PIL on the exam, that if any of the choices in such a question was found to be a wrong choice, the candidate would get zero.

The PIL has been filed by Rajeev Kumar of IIT-Kharagpur. As per the evaluation scheme submitted before the court, a candidate will get zero because he darkened a wrong choice along with correct answers.