The Supreme Court Refused to Postpone GATE 2022

The Supreme Court dismissed the petitions seeking postponement of GATE 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The bench of Justices DY Chandrachud, Surya Kant, and Vikram Nath said that it is a policy matter on which government authorities have to take a call and interference by the court at this stage would lead to chaos.

“With the current third wave, Covid-19 due to its new variant Omicron has spread severely in several states, cities. Several studies including one done by IIT Kanpur predict that the peak of the 3rd wave is expected in early February and the wave will end by April. Therefore, the peak is most likely to coincide with the usual exam dates of GATE,” the petition read.

In reply to the petition, the court said, “We cannot start postponing exams like this. Everything is opening up now, we cannot play with the career of students like this. One petitioner is a coaching centre. This an academic policy matter”.

Additionally, the Supreme Court also informed that while lakhs of candidates are appearing and preparing for the exams, only 20000 applicants had signed the online petition seeking postponement of the exam. Thus, to avoid chaos and uncertainty among the rest of the candidates, the top court said it has decided to dismiss the plea seeking postponement of the GATE 2022 exams.