SC praises suspended IIT 'whistleblower' professor, calls him an unsung hero-Oct 13, 2011

SC praises suspended IIT 'whistleblower' professor, calls him an unsung hero

Akshaya MukulAkshaya Mukul, TNN | Oct 13, 2011, 04.01AM IST



IIT Kharagpur professor Rajiv Kumar suspended for tarnishing the institute's reputation has won praise from the Supreme Court for ensuring transparency in the entrance examination process.

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has praised the efforts put in by Rajeev Kumar, professor of computer science, IIT Kharagpur, in improving the Joint Entrance Examination system and said that he would be "one of the many unsung heroes" who did so.

Though a bench of Justices RV Raveendran and AK Patnaik on Tuesday dismissed a special leave petition which sought admission to Kumar's son in IIT, it acknowledged that the cutoff procedure, adopted in JEE 2006, may not be the best of procedures, nor as sound and effective as the present procedures. Praising Kumar, the SC said, "The appellant will have to be satisfied in being one of the many unsung heroes who helped in improving the system." However, Kumar remains suspended from IIT, Kharagpur for past many months.

The SC said, "The court should not interfere with the procedures, even if it was not accurate or efficient, in the absence of malafide or arbitrariness or violation of law."

However, the Bench said, "In fact the action taken by the appellants in challenging the procedure for JEE 2006, their attempts to bring in transparency in the procedure by various RTI applications, and the debate generated by the several views of experts during the course of the writ proceedings, have helped in making the merit ranking process more transparent and accurate."

The SC said, "IITs and the JEE candidates who now participate in the examinations must, to a certain extent, thank the appellants for their effort in bringing such transparency and accuracy in the ranking procedure."

While making these observations, the bench said, "If in JEE 2006, a different or better process had been adopted, or the process now in vogue had been adopted, the results would have been different and the first appellant might have obtained a seat."

It may be noted that IITs never disclosed their cutoff procedures till JEE 2006. On being challenged by the appellants, they submitted four procedures, one after another each time, when the appellant challenged that the official cutoffs could not be calculated by the disclosed procedure.

Strangely, after being challenged, the cutoffs fell down to low levels of 1, 4, 3 in JEE 2007; 5,0,3 in JEE 2008, in Maths, Physics and Chemistry respectively, whereas in 2006 the cutoffs were 37, 48 55. Though the 2006 cutoffs till now remain unexplained, the cutoff marks in subsequent JEEs increased to 11, 8, 11 in 2009; 17, 19, 19 in 2010; and 34, 20, 20 in 2011.

It was due to Kumar's efforts that the cutoff procedure are being made public from JEE 2007 onwards. His efforts have also resulted in candidates getting the question papers, answer-keys, scanned copies of their Optic Response Sheet, and their marks, within a few days of the result.