Breaking News : Relief For SET 2012 Candidates By Madurai Bench

Dear Friends,

               There is good news for candidates who appeared for the tough-to-crack 2012 edition of the State Eligibility Test (SET), a mandatory qualification for aspiring assistant professors (formerly lecturers). The Madras High Court’s Madurai Bench has upheld an
August 2013 order of Justice D Hari Paranthaman allowing a batch of petitions praying to declare them as having qualified in the SET held in June and October 2012.

          Justice Hari Paranthaman had declared all candidates, who obtained the separate minimum marks as prescribed in the notification for the National Eligibility Test (NET) / SET pursuant to the first notification issued by the University Grant Commission, as qualified. Originally, the UGC issued a notification on June 4, 2012 for the NET examinations prescribing that the maximum marks in respect of Papers I and II is 100 and Paper III is 150.

          Subsequently, the Bharathiar University published the results of SET on February 9, 2013. But before the publication of the results in NET/SET, an additional criterion was fixed for passing NET/SET. Besides getting the minimum percentage of marks, as prescribed in the notification, the General Category, OBC Category and Disabled/SC/ST Category candidates shall get an aggregate of at least 65%, 60% and 55% respectively. Aggrieved by this, the petitioners, who scored minimum marks as notified earlier, moved the court seeking for a direction to declare them qualified in NET/SET exams, which the judge allowed.

Meanwhile, a batch of NET candidates from Kanpur approached SC with a similar plea, but SC upheld the UGC’s additional criteria. Armed with the SC order the SET Secretary preferred an appeal before a Division Bench. The bench dismissed the appeal pointing out that a five-member committee was constituted for fixing the final criteria for the UGC-NET but no such committee was constituted for the SET.