After clubbing of the Writ petitions and cases against the equi-percentile calculation process of DTE Maharashtra in MAH CET 2015 result, the Bombay High Court has decided to hear the view points of DTE Maharashtra today on April 15, 2015. Since the fate of 57224 test takers is at stake, High Court of Bombay would not also prefer to delay the admission process for MBA/MMS 2015-17 courses in Maharashtra B schools. The hearing could have been done on April 14, 2015 but since it was a pre-declared holiday, the process could not be held.
Number of Writ petitions by thousands of dissatisfied test takers who were adversely affected after declaration of MAH CET 2015 result were filed in the High Court of Bombay and its benches at Aurangabad and Nagpur. It has also been reported that another PIL was filed on April 13, 2015 in Pune as well. To bring uniformity and to avoid wastage of time, the High Court of Bombay directed to club all the petitions and fix single date of hearing for them. It will help the aggrieved students to get justice without delay as all the cases are same.
While the onus of responsibility to hold glitch free and fair MAH CET 2015 exam for admission to MBA/MMS 2015 lies on Directorate of Technical Education (DTE) Maharashtra, the decision of Bombay High Court will settle the flying dust on speculation whether DTE has to conduct the re-exam or find some other acceptable solution to defuse the crisis.
The Crisis
Directorate of Technical Education (DTE) Maharashtra conducted MAH-MBA/MMS CET 2015 on March 14 & 15, 2015 in 2 sessions on each day. Reports of technical glitches at some centres compelled DTE Maharashtra to reschedule the exam for the particular centre for next day. Another grave issue was the appearance of wrong questions and wrong answer options in the exam which made DTE Maharashtra not to evaluate 59 questions out of 800 questions in the exam.
To avoid any probable injustice due to existing scoring pattern, DTE Maharashtra adopted the standard equi percentile process in result declaration. To resolve the issue, DTE picked the Percentile scale of Batch II as the reference base for equi-percentile calculation while processing the MAH CET 2014 result. The reason cited by DTE for the taking the session-2 exam of March 14, 2015 as reference base is that the maximum number of 14817 candidates appeared for this batch and rest of the batches had less candidates in each session.
But the calculation process for equated scores as adopted by DTE created panic and confusion among the test takers as the result awarded higher percentile to low scorers and lower percentile to high scorers. The dissatisfied candidates discarded the methodology as adopted by the DTE Maharashtra in equi percentile calculation and demanded re-examination. Hundreds of the candidates contacted Dr S K Mahajan Director DTE Maharashtra, Education Minister of Govt of Maharashtra. But neither DTE nor Education Ministry agreed to hold re-exam nor they reconsidered the calculation process of awarding the percentile which caused so much anomaly.
With no hope for justice from DTE Maharashtra or Ministry of education who filed Caveat in the court fearing that the candidates could file Writ in the courts against DTE, the affected MAH CET 2015 test takers filed PILs in the High Court of Bombay and its other benches across Maharashtra. The court has fixed April 15, 2015 as the hearing date allowing DTE Maharashtra to put forth its view point on the issue.
Candidates collected funds to file PILs and fight case in the court. It would have not happened if DTE had sorted out the matter to the satisfaction of all. All the exercise is to make the DTE aware of the injustice done to the MAH CET 2015 test takers in award of percentile by adopting a process that has pushed the high scorer to low percentile while the low scorer has got a higher percentile.
MBAUniverse.com has been carrying forward the just cause of these candidates with all stake holders. While the justice seeking candidates share their gratitude saying “We are very thankful to MBAUniverse for bringing their insights on this issue in unbiased way” neither DTE Maharashtra nor Ministry of Education has cared to respond to the students’ query forwarded by MBAUniverse.com for their responses
MAH CET 2015 takers: Hope for the best
The affected candidates due to faulty equi percentile calculation process of DTE Maharashtra have conveyed to MBAUniverse.com that had the calculation method adopted by DTE Maharashtra been perfect, ‘IIT professors, JBIMS director, eminent experts from MBA Coaching industry would not have agreed upon these issues’.
According to the test takers “Professors of IIT Bombay have also agreed upon wrong application of equi-percentile method. Besides, we are looking forward to get in touch with Indian Statistical Institute to get any alternative method to bring fairness in this case, say Normalization”.
DTE: Responsive but inactive
DTE is also not totally averse to the candidates’ view point but probably due to its own constraints that may see many heads rolling in case the accountability is fixed for wrong presentation of test paper and other technical glitches, the DTE is not openly supporting the contention of the dissatisfied test takers.
Revealing the inside story, candidates fighting for justice share ‘DTE has been responsive in our case as I personally following this issue from 16th March 2015. DTE officials have been reluctant to comment on certain issues like technical glitches, parameters of difficulty levels but they were open to listen to our grievances’.
Justice for all
Although dissatisfied but these candidates have assured that from their group they will not support, adopt or pressurize any method or inappropriate way, on DTE that will adversely affect Candidate score of MAH MBA CET-15 of any slot. On the contrary they hope for the best from the verdict of judiciary saying “We all strongly believe in our Judiciary System”.
Dissatisfied but not adamant on Re-test
Sharing the concern of all candidates, who have been awarded low percentile despite scoring high in MAH CET 2015, the candidates fighting for justice are not adamant on re-test only and say “we assure that we are constantly looking into different alternatives than retest only. We will inform you as soon as we reach on any concrete solution. Meanwhile we are requesting all MAH MBA CET15 candidates do collect your required documents for further admission process”.
It is anticipated that Bombay High Court will deliver the verdict at the earliest after completion of hearing today
To help out MAH CET 2015 candidates, MBAUniverse.com has started unique initiative to provide LIVE MAH CET 2015 Results update, news, Cut-offs, Expert guidance, DTE Admission Counselling and GD PI Updates for Admission 2015.
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