ICSE board also discriminatory: Supreme Court

Amidst utter confusion over the differential criteria adopted for the junior college admissions, the Supreme Court on Monday asked the state government to file an affidavit explaining its decision of introducing the best-five rule for SSC students.

During the two-hour hearing of the case, senior counsel Harish Salve defended the government’s decision in bringing out the rule which the Bombay high court had struck down as “discriminatory”.

Justices VS Sirpurkar and Cyriac Joseph said they were not keen on examining the board’s powers to frame guidelines. However, they were interested in examining the merit of SSC students who passed in all six subjects and ICSE students who passed five subjects out of seven.

The judges felt the ICSE board’s system was also discriminatory as one student may study hard and secure a certain percentage, but his other classmates who concentrate only on five subjects and fail in two may score higher marks.

Salve contended there was lack of uniformity in the education sector all over the country. The judges observed that if the dichotomy seen in the best-five case could be resolved by an amendment in law, it would be of great redress to students.

 “Students are students. Let’s not describe them as their [ICSE] students and our students [SSC[,’’ the court remarked.
Under the policy, an SSC student's top five scores in six subjects are considered while calculating his percentage.