Mekhana Siby vs Commissioner For Entrance Examinations Kerala & Anr.

Petitioner seeks for a direction to include her in the rank list of Kerala Engineering, Architecture, Medicine, 2026 (for brevity ‘KEAM’), after considering her qualifying marks of the twelfth standard, either by permitting her to upload those marks or by accepting the marks already available with the respondents.

Petitioner is a Higher Secondary School Graduate having passed the examination conducted by the Board of Higher Secondary Education on 26.05.2026 as per the results published. Though she had applied for the KEAM, and allegedly submitted all the necessary documents along with her application, when the results were published, her name was not included. According to the petitioner, she had uploaded her Higher Secondary course mark list in the web portal and she had scored 37.5255 out of 300 at the entrance examination, much above the minimum cut off for being included in the rank list. Since the petitioner has been excluded from the rank list without any reason, she has approached this Court seeking a direction for her inclusion. Petitioner also alleges that she was never intimated of any defect in her application, and hence it has to be presumed that she had uploaded the application with all the relevant documents.

A statement has been filed on behalf of the first respondent stating that the marks obtained by the candidates in the qualifying examinations are required to be entered into the online portal for calculating the rank as well as allotment. After referring to the procedure adopted, it was stated that the students will have to upload their marks within the time line mentioned to be included in the rank list. According to the respondents, though petitioner had submitted her application for the entrance examination, she had not submitted the qualifying examination marks through the candidate portal, within the time granted for that purpose and consequently no Mark Submission Confirmation Report evidencing successful submission of the petitioner's marks was generated in her candidate portal. It is also stated that petitioner is therefore not entitled to seek a direction to treat her qualifying examination marks as having been submitted or to permit submission of the petitioner's marks after the closure of the prescribed time limit. In the statement it is also mentioned that the qualifying examination marks received from the concerned Boards are made available to Commissionerate only through secure electronic data-transfer channels and are maintained in the system in a protected mode, which data is not automatically treated as a final submission for participation in the rank list and allotment process.

Sri.Madhu Radhakrishnan, the learned counsel for the petitioner submitted that the petitioner had uploaded the mark list of her qualifying examination and there was no indication of any error or any notification of a defect in the said application and therefore it has to be presumed that she had uploaded her mark list and that her application was proper. According to the learned counsel, it cannot be imagined that the petitioner, after applying and preparing for the entrance examination, would have omitted to upload her mark list and therefore a sympathetic consideration ought to be adopted. It was further submitted that, even if there was any error, no prejudice would be caused in permitting the petitioner to upload her marks at this juncture. In the alternative, it was submitted, after referring to the various clauses including clause 1.5 of the Prospectus for admission to Professional Degree Courses 2026, that even without the qualifying marks, she could be included in the rank list to enable her to seek admission, if seats are vacant.

Smt. Laya Mary Joseph, the learned Government Pleader on the other hand submitted that the defect memos are issued to the candidates at the initial stage soon after the applications are submitted, while the mark lists are to be uploaded later, when the respective Boards publish their results and at that point in time, no defect memo or notice, is even possible to be issued to any candidate. The learned Government Pleader further submitted that the marks made available by the respective Boards are in a protected mode and such data cannot be automatically accessed as it is sent through an electronic data transfer and will be open for view, only when the candidates upload their mark list. The learned Government Pleader further submitted that, if the petitioner is permitted to upload the marks at a subsequent stage, every candidate, who had omitted to upload their marks for whatever reason, would seek the benefit of such orders and therefore the court should be loath to issue such directions. The learned Government Pleader also submitted that there are various candidates who may apply for the entrance examination but may subsequently choose not to seek admission for various reasons and it is only upon completing the prescribed mark verification and submission process through the candidate portal, followed by generation of the Mark Submission Confirmation Report will the Commissionerate be able to verify whether a candidate has opted to have his/her qualifying marks considered for rank calculation and allotment.

I have considered the rival submissions.

The admission to the Engineering degree course is governed by the Prospectus for admission to Professional Degree Courses 2026 (for short 'Prospectus'). The said Prospectus requires the marks of the qualifying Board examination to be uploaded within a timeline. Though the petitioner claims to have uploaded her Higher Secondary course marks, no material is available before the Court to come to such a conclusion. Even though it is evident from Ext.P8 that the petitioner had tried to login or even logged on to the website of the Commissionerate of Entrance Examinations on 27.06.2026, the same is not a reason to assume that she had uploaded her marks.

The contention that, perhaps, due to a technical error, the uploaded marks would not have been received by the Entrance Commissionerate is also not legally sustainable as there is again, nothing on record to indicate the existence of any such error. If at all the petitioner was unable to upload the mark list, there would have been some material, at least in the form of an email communication or other documents, indicating a complaint raised by the petitioner immediately. In the absence of any such detail, this Court cannot accept the contention of a system error. Moreover, it is only the petitioner who has approached this Court alleging such a technical error. If at all there was any technical error, it would have certainly affected numerous persons and complaints would have been raised by others as well. In the absence of such complaints by others, the contention of the petitioner cannot be accepted.

The omission to upload the marks within the specified timeline cannot be rectified by any subsequent action or direction, that too, after the rank list has been published, as it would cause prejudice to numerous persons including those who had failed to upload their marks within the cut off period. Further, the entire process of preparation of rank list and the allotment process will fall into disarray if the timelines are not followed. Of course, if the default is on account of the action of the respondents, it could be a different situation. However, there is no material before this Court to conclude that there was any default on the part of the respondents to receive the mark list.

Further, the secured availability of marks in the database of the second respondent is not a reason to disregard the requirement of uploading of marks by the candidate. The said requirement is in fact, as per the pleadings, an enabling mechanism to retrieve and display the marks of the candidate made available by the respective Boards. Those marks made available by the respective Boards are stated to be in a protected mode with the data not accessible to the respondents until the candidates upload their mark list. Thus the requirement to upload the marks obtained at the qualifying examination is unavoidable.

The contentions of the learned counsel for the petitioner, relying upon various clauses of the Prospectus, though appealing at first glance, they are, on a closer scrutiny, not legally tenable. The first contention based on the Prospectus, was that, as per clause 9.7.5 read along with clause 1.5, indicate that a candidate can be included in the rank list even if his academic qualifying examination marks are not uploaded. It was also contended that even if petitioner’s marks for her twelfth standard is taken as ‘0’ still she is entitled to be included in the rank list.

To appreciate the said contentions, it is necessary to extract some of the clauses of the Prospectus, which are as follows:

From the above clauses, it can be assimilated that the scheme of KEAM 2026 is that 50% mark from the qualifying Board examination and 50% marks of the entrance examination are clubbed to identify the ranks. As the results of the qualifying Board examinations are generally published after the entrance examination, a candidate must submit the application for KEAM 2026, much prior to the publication of the qualifying Board examination. Once the marks for the entrance examination is available, those marks scored in the Engineering Entrance by a candidate are subjected to a process of normalization based on a percentile interpolated average method, as per clause 9.4.4 of the Prospectus. After the qualifying Board examination results are published and the marks uploaded by a student, those marks in the qualifying examinations of the different Boards are also normalized using a formula. It is subsequent to the above process that the rank list of KEAM 2026 will be prepared by giving equal weightage of 50:50 to the normalized score obtained at the Entrance Examination for Engineering course as well as the qualifying Board examination. Thus there are two parts required for preparing the rank list for the Engineering Course.

Clause 9.7.5 of the Prospectus 2026 refers to one part that relates to the qualifying standard in the entrance examination. The said clause stipulates that a candidate must score a minimum normalized score of 10 in the Engineering Entrance Examination, to even figure in the rank list. In other words, if he does not score the minimum of 10 in the entrance examination, he will not be included in the rank list. The aforesaid clause does not mean that if a candidate scores above 10 in the entrance examination, he should be included in the rank list. That minimum score is only one of the two parts of the scores for preparing the rank list.

The other or second part is the qualifying marks of the Board examination. Without the qualifying marks of the Board examination, the rank list cannot be prepared, which is evident from clause 6.2.6(ii) which stipulates that candidates qualified in the Engineering Entrance Examination should submit their qualifying examination marks online and upload the mark list of the final year of the qualifying examination within the stipulated time. Clause 7.7(v) is in addition which provides that candidates who do not submit or upload the marks list of the qualifying examination on or before the date specified, will not be included in the Engineering rank list. These clauses are peremptory in nature and cannot be diluted under any count whatsoever. In fact, stipulations prescribed in a Prospectus have the force of law and it is not proper for this Court to make any variation to the stipulations in the prospectus invoking the power under Article 226 of the Constitution of India. The decision of this Court in Dr.Arun Thomas and Others v. State of Kerala and Others (2016) SCC OnLine Ker 3777 is relevant in this contest.

Notwithstanding the above provisions, a confusion arises, as pointed out by the learned Counsel for the petitioner, on account of clause 1.5 of the Prospectus which states that the rank lists shall include all candidates qualified in the respective Entrance Examinations conducted by the Commissioner for Entrance Examinations, Kerala/National Testing Agency (NTA)/Council of Architecture (CoA) irrespective of their academic eligibility and category. However, on a proper reading of clause 1.5 it can be comprehended that the term ‘irrespective of their academic eligibility’ does not mean absence of marks of the qualifying Board examination, but irrespective of the marks scored in the Board examination. The said concept can be better understood from the fact that every Central Council (like AICTE, CoA, NTA etc.,) will have a minimum academic eligibility of 45% for a certain category of students or 40% for certain other categories. The purpose of clause 1.5 of the Prospectus only means that a candidate will be included in the rank list, even if his marks in the qualifying examination is less than the minimum eligibility required for a course. This clause cannot be held to mean that the qualifying mark of the Board examination is not at all required. On the contrary, the various clauses of the Prospectus are emphatic that the marks of the qualifying Board examination as well as the entrance examination are both required to prepare the rank list.

Though the case of the petitioner is unfortunate, as she may have omitted to upload her qualifying Board examination marks unintentionally, the Court cannot arrive at conclusions rooted in sympathetic considerations alone, ignoring the principles governing the admission process.

In view of the above discussion, the petitioner is not entitled for any relief and hence, the writ petition is dismissed.

Exhibit P1 TRUE COPY OF THE RESULT PUBLISHED BY THE BOARD OF PUBLIC EXAMINATIONS

Exhibit P2 TRUE COPY OF THE ACKNOWLEDGMENT DATED 23/1/2026 ISSUED BY THE 1ST RESPONDENT

Exhibit P3 TRUE COPY OF THE SCORE OF THE PETITIONER AS PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE OF THE 1ST RESPONDENT DATED NIL

Exhibit P4 TRUE COPY OF THE RANK LIST WEBPAGE OF THE 1ST RESPONDENT DATED NIL

Exhibit P5 TRUE COPY OF THE EMAIL ISSUED BY THE PETITIONER TO THE OFFICIAL EMAIL ID OF THE 1ST RESPONDENT

Exhibit P6 TRUE COPY OF THE MEMO REQUESTING THE PETITIONER TO UPLOAD THE PLUS TWO MARK LIST AND MINORITY CERTIFICATE IN THE PORTAL RECEIVED VIA WHATSAPP FROM THE COMPUTER CENTRE

Exhibit P7 TRUE COPY OF THE MEMO REQUESTING THE PETITIONER TO UPLOAD THE APPROPRIATE MINORITY CERTIFICATE IN THE PORTAL RECEIVED VIA WHATSAPP FROM THE COMPUTER CENTRE

Exhibit P8 TRUE COPY OF THE TEXT MESSAGES RECEIVED FROM THE RESPONDENT FROM 03-06-2026 TO 02-07-2026

Exhibit P9 TRUE COPY OF THE RELEVANT PAGES OF THE PROSPECTUS FOR ADMISSION TO PROFESSIONAL DEGREE COURSES 2026

ANNEXURE R1(A) TRUE COPY OF THE NOTIFICATION DATED 03.06.2026