No negative marking in competitive exams: Madras high court

Chennai: The Madras high court has held that the system of negative marking in the competitive examination has to be done away with, in as much as the same perforce requires reconsideration.

Justice R.Mahadevan gave the ruling while disposing of the petition filed by S.Nelson Prabhakar, a student.

There has to be a level playing field in examination in



general, especially in competitive examination. Negative marking acts a weight behind the mental strength of a student and the student approaches every question with an element of fear, the judge added.

The judge said he/she has to be doubly cautious, while choosing the answer for the question. In other words, a student has to be confident about the answer. Such confidence of knowing each and every answer cannot be expected from the students, meritorious or otherwise. If there was no negative mark, the students were given an opportunity to take a wide thinking and apply intelligent guessing.