(News) AIPMT 2015 exam cancelled, Supreme Court directs CBSE to conduct fresh test within 4 weeks
Over 630,000 students will have to take the All-India Pre-Medical Test afresh in four weeks after the Supreme Court on Monday scrapped it due to large-scale irregularities but experts fear protracted admission delays after the CBSE indicated the time-frame was not enough.
A bench of justices RK Agarwal and Amitava Roy also ordered that all institutes involved in the AIPMT exam process must cooperate with the CBSE to conduct the retest.
The bench said that although the re-conduct of the examination would consume time and cause inconvenience but to maintain the "impeccable and irrefutable" credibility of examination "this is the price, the stakeholders would have to suffer".
"We are not unaware that in holding the present examination as well as in participating in the exercise, all genuinely concerned have put in tireless efforts. All these however have been rendered futile by a handful of elements seeking to reap undue financial gain by subjecting the process to their evil manoeuvres.
"We have thus no hesitation to order that the All India Pre-Medical and Pre-Dental Test stands cancelled. CBSE would now have to hold a fresh examination at the earliest... We direct the Board, in the attendant of facts and circumstances to hold the examination within a period of four weeks from today," the bench said.
The top court rejected the CBSE's argument that cancelling the test would be unfair when only 44 students had been booked for unfair practices and said the entire examination process stood vitiated.
"The bigger issue is that the sanctity of the examination is under suspicion. We want to be doubly sure that there is no alternative but to order re-conduct of the exam," a two-judge SC bench said.
The court was hearing a batch of petitions filed by candidates, who wrote the exam, seeking its cancellation.
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