However, the division bench of Justice M B Ghodeswar and Justice B N Srikrishna suggested to the state government that in future it should consider accepting marksheets downloaded from the internet.

The state government pleader, R V Govilkar, told the bench that S C Gupta, who had filed the petition on behalf of his daughter Priyanka, had not submitted the original application form when he met sought admission for engineering course from the director of technical education on June 28, two days after the last date for applications.

Gupta, a Central government officer who had been transferred to Mumbai from Andhra Pradesh (AP), had downloaded his daughter Priyanka's marksheet from the internet and had applied for engineering course in the state, since the results were declared on June 22, 1999 and the last date foraccepting the application forms for the engineering courses in the state was June 26.

Govilkar explained that the state had refused to accept the petitioner's application on June 26, since they could not accept an internet marksheet and also because the application did not contain the transfer certificate. However, when the applications were again submitted to the director on June 28, they were not the original copies but photocopies of the same, while the transfer certificate (TC) was in the original.

Advocate for the petitioner P M Pradahan told the that a TC was available only after the results were declared. So, while the results were declared on June 22 in Andhra Pradesh, the TC was available only on June 25. Justice Srikrishna remarked that if the marksheets could be downloaded from the internet, the transfer certificate could have been faxed for the application.

On Tuesday, Govilkar had told the bench that the state had taken a policy decision to reject internet marksheets since around 66 suchmarksheets from the Nanded division were found to have been downloaded in pre-printed forms. Following the submissions in the case today, the petition was rejected.

However, the petition served its purpose in bringing the issue of internet marksheets into the fore. Accepting the suggestion by the bench Govilkar said that the state would surely take a decision, since it was only this year that results were being declared on the internet.