KEAM 2025 results: Girl who took on Kerala govt wants Computer Science in top college, may get it as rank goes up

Kochi-based student who challenged the Kerala government's decision to amend the prospectus and introduce new standardisation formula for KEAM 2025 (Kerala Engineering, Architecture, and Medical Courses) has had her rank moved up from 4209 to 3067 with the revision of the rank list. It was her petition which set off a legal battle against what is perceived as a hasty decision of the Higher Education Department to change prospectus to favour state syllabus students. The 18-year-old student followed CBSE syllabus for her Class XII course.

Her father said that the legal fight was never against the government but against the denial of justice. "She wanted to pursue Computer Science in a reputed institute in Kerala. She didn't go for entrance coaching regularly, but she focused on studying subjects based on weightage mentioned in the prospectus published in February 2025. When the formula was changed, she didn't get the expected rank. She was disappointed and planned to repeat. It was then that we checked the previous years' scores and understood that for the same score, students got better ranks last year. It was unjust to change the prospectus and formula randomly and students had to pay for it. This was never against state syllabus students, but like our daughter, other students also put in a lot of effort and study based on weightage," the parent said. He requested not to be named for this article.

After the student filed the petition, another batch of petitions by CBSE students was also considered by the Kerala High Court while delivering the verdict. Advocate Mohan Jacob George, who won the case for the student, said that the government went ahead with the decision to amend the prospectus ignoring the apprehensions of the standardisation committee. "The procedure for ranking was amended on the date of the publication of the rank list. The candidate who obtained similar marks in the previous year was ranked 1907. This amendment was illegal and was made with the intention to do away with the weightage given to CBSE/ICSE students," he said.

The standardisation review committee (SRC) constituted by the state government held four meetings and it was repeatedly told that implementing the new method this year would not be scientifically appropriate as a more comprehensive study is required to make an authoritative comparison with the current method.

The student who filed the petition passed Class XII with 96.2% marks. In the rank list earlier published on May 14, she scored 164 out of 300. She was confident of securing a rank within 2000 which would have enabled her to secure admission in one of the leading engineering colleges in Kerala.

In her petition, she pointed out that till 2011, the CEE (Commissioner for Entrance Examination) considered the marks obtained in the entrance examination alone for preparing the rank list. From 2011, a different system was adopted whereby the marks secured by the students in Class XII in Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry were also reckoned and taken into account for preparing the rank list.

The High Court Division bench on Thursday upheld the single bench order to cancel the amendment of the prospectus and directed the state government to publish a revised rank list as per the old formula. This led to massive rejig in rank list with CBSE students either retaining previous ranks or going up in rankings and state syllabus students saw their ranks drop.