Try harder for UGC NET, check revised eligibility!

University Grants Commission’s National Eligibility Test or UGC-NET, was conducted in multiple choice question format for the first time in June 2012. But then the revised eligibility criteria led to controversy.

The latest is that the Supreme Court has sustained UGC's qualifying policy of fixing eligibility criteria for candidates taking the UGC NET.

What was the issue?

Before the June 2012 exam, it was declared that General Category students will have to secure 40 per cent marks in Paper 1 and 2 and 50 per cent marks in Paper 3 (with 5 and 10 per cent relaxation for OBC and SC/ST candidates, respectively). But eventually, the eligibility requirement to pass the exam was increased to 65 per cent aggregate in all the three papers for General category, 60 per cent for OBC and 55 per cent for SC/ST as final qualifying criteria. This upward revision in the eligibility criteria, declared after the exam, dashed the hopes of several aspirants.

Candidates, securing minimum passing marks, but not the expected aggregate marks in the NET, filed writ petitions in the Nagpur bench and the Kerala high court.

"The UGC has only implemented the opinion of experts by laying down the qualifying criteria which cannot be considered as arbitrary, illegal or discriminatory or violative of Article 14 of the Constitution of India," the SC bench of Justice K S Radhakrishnan and A K Sikri stated in a judgment (pronounced on September 19, 2013).

Aspirants qualifying this exam become eligible for junior research fellowships and lectureships in Indian universities and colleges.

“For attaining the said standards, it is open to the UGC to lay down any qualifying criteria which has a rational nexus to the object to be achieved," said the bench. "The court shall not generally sit in appeal over the opinion expressed by expert academic bodies and normally it is wise and safe for the courts to leave the decision of academic experts who are more familiar with the problem they face, than the courts generally are."

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