NET: court declines  stay

K0CHI:  A Division Bench  of the Kerala  High Court on Tues-day declined to  stay a single

judge's  order  quashing  the University  Grants  Commission's  (UGC)'s  new  eligibility

criteria  for  the  National Eligibility  Test.

The bench comprising Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice K, Vinod Chandran posted an appeal

filed by the UGC to February 5 For Final Hearing

The  Single  Judge  had also directed the UGC to grant certificates to candidates who had obtained the minimum mark  prescribed  earlier

UGC's contention

The UGC contended that the court had no right to make a declaration regarding the result of a test. The original notification had clearly' stated that the candidates should obtain minimum required marks in each paper separately.It had also been said that the qualifying criteria for Junior Research Fellowship and
eligibility for Lectureship would be decided by the UGC before the declaration of results

It was a moderation committee appointed by the UGC and consisting of senior academicians that had

rec-commended that the general, OBC (non-creamy layer) and the SC/ST candidates would be required to obtain an aggregate percentage of 65, 60 and 55 respectively in addition to the paper vise minimum Percentage as qualifying criteria the  UGC said.

Within powers
The appeal said that in order to maintain high standard in education, prescription of an aggregate percentage in an examination was well within the powers of UGC. Prescribing the Qualifying criteria by fixing an aggregate percentage could not be called change of rules in the middle of the test\. No new criterion was introduced by UGC