JUDGMENT :

Bechu Kurian Thomas, J.

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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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