1. It is rather unfortunate that the State of Tamil Nadu represented by its Additional Chief Secretary to Government, Higher Education Department, should come up with a writ petition of this nature. In this writ petition, they sought to challenge the regulations framed by the All India Council for Technical Education (for short AICTE) in prescribing minimum norms for admission into engineering courses and they wanted to lower the marks further.

2. The AICTE by its communication, dated 11.7.2011 had informed that entry level qualification for under graduate programs approved by the Council was reviewed in its executive committee meeting held on 28.6.2011. Following the decision taken in the meeting, a notification was issued on 04.07.2011 redefining the entry level qualifications for technical programmes. As per the revised norms, the minimum eligibility for under graduate programmes is 45% for the general category and for the reserved category students, it had been fixed as 40%. The redefined norms of minimum eligibility marks prescribed for the year 2011-2012 was also incorporated in the Approval Process Handbook for the year 2012-2013 under Appendix I, Serial Nos.1 and 2