Kerala HC rejects plea of ​​CBSE students challenging prospectus for admission to professional courses

The Kerala High Court has dismissed a petition filed by several CBSE students regarding the Kerala Government’s Professional Admissions Prospectus, 2026. The plea challenged the weighting of the subject and the standardization pattern incorporated in the prospectus with respect to the preparation of the rank list for engineering courses.

The students said that the new standardized method has created “a lot of prejudice against CBSE students as it is being implemented without any professional study”. In the entrance examination conducted in Kerala, a standardization procedure was introduced in 2012 to maintain uniformity among students from various boards such as CBSE, ICSE and Kerala Board of Public Examination and this procedure continued till 2025.

The Commissioner of Entrance Examinations argued that the Government was entitled to make regulations in the prospectus reflecting its policy on admissions to professional courses. He also claimed that the new procedure will not put students at a disadvantage.

Single Judge Bechu Kurian Thomas observed that the new standardization scheme is a matter of government policy and courts can only interfere in circumstances of explicit arbitrariness or prejudice. After examining the history of the standardization system adopted by the government in 2012 and 2025, the court dismissed the claims, saying that there was no dispute about the government’s authority to change the examination and evaluation scheme and system, and therefore the suit by the students was not legally maintainable.

Published – 09 Jun 2026 23:39 IST