In Brief
The Supreme Court refused to interfere with the Indian Institutes of Technology's decision to award bonus marks to all candidates in JEE (Advanced) 2017 for two questions affected by printing inconsistencies. While the petitioner argued that students who answered correctly received fewer marks than those who didn't attempt the questions, the Court found that uniform bonus marking was the fairest approach in a large-scale examination with 1,56,000 candidates and negative marking provisions. The Court distinguished the Guru Nanak Dev University precedent as inapplicable to such complex situations and vacated its earlier stay on admissions and counselling. It directed the examination body to implement a foolproof mechanism for future question paper preparation to prevent such errors.
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