New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to
entertain a PIL seeking stay on tomorrow`s declaration of
results of the prestigious IIT Joint Entrance Examination for
2010-11 and the slammed the petitioner NGO Satya Foundation
for its "publicity stunt."
Questioning the locus standi and the intention of the
petitioner, the apex court queried, "Did you ever bother to
take up the cause of those killed in Dantewada (75 CRPF
personnel) or those who lost their lives in the recent natural
calamities."
The PIL had sought stay of the results on the ground that
there were several errors in the instructions attached to the
question paper and faulty marking system which it claimed
undermined the prospects of over 3000 students.
A vacation bench of Justices G S Singhvi and C K Prasad,
while dismissing the PIL, cautioned that any such stay
would affect the career of over four lakh students and might
lead to serious consequences including suicides by the
aspirants.
The bench rebuked Chetan Upadhyaya, secretary of the
association and said it would have imposed a huge cost on the
petitioner but was refraining from doing so as he was a young
man and appeared to have been misguided.
"Some students will even commit suicide. Who will be
responsible for it if we stay the results. There are three
types of PILs--Public Interest Litigation, Private Interest
Litigation and Publicity Interest Litigation. This petition
has been filed as a publicity stunt," the bench observed.
The apex court said it was convinced that the petitioner
has no locus standi and justification to meddle with the
declaration of the results.
"Ordinarily we would have saddled the petitioner with a
five figure amount. But keeping in view the fact that he is
young and seems to have been misguided, we refrain from doing
so," the bench observed while dismissing the appeal.
Senior counsel R Venkatramani appeared for the Union
Government.
The Delhi High Court had earlier on May 19 dismissed the
NGO`s plea for staying the result but kept the petition
pending with a direction to the IIT`s organising committee for
JEE to demonstrate before it on June 2 the software adopted
for evaluation of answer sheets.
The high court had also sought an affidavit from the
committee about the corrective measures taken by it to protect
the IIT-JEE aspirants from any disadvantage.
Even as the high court was seized of the matter, the NGO
sought to approach the apex court for stay of the results
scheduled for tomorrow which evoked the bench`s ire and
rebuff.
PTI
