St Stephen’s moves HC to challenge directions to admit 7 students

New Delhi
St Stephen’s College on Monday approached the division bench of the Delhi high court, challenging the order passed by a single-judge bench to grant admission to seven students whose admission was in limbo due to a dispute between the college and the Delhi University (DU).
Claiming that the findings of the single-judge bench would create severe burden on the college, the counsel for St Stephen’s urged a bench of acting chief justice Manmohan and justice Tushar Rao Gedela to list the matter for hearing on Tuesday, to which the court agreed.
On September 6, a single-judge bench of justice Swarana Kanta Sharma directed St Stephen’s College to grant admission to seven students — clubbing two petitions, filed by six students and one student separately in the same matter — who were unable to secure admission despite being allotted a seat by DU. The court upheld DU’s policy to allocate extra seats in the initial round, which was disputed by the college.
The common seat allocation system (CSAS) (UG) 2024, which grants the university power to allocate students in the initial rounds to commence the academic session on time, is binding on all the colleges affiliated with the university, justice Sharma said.
The court, in a 54-page verdict, said that the students were not at fault at any point of the admission process, but had to face undue hardship due to the ongoing dispute between DU and the college over the seat matrix and the manner of calculation of allocated seats. Justice Sharma also laid down a guideline directing all colleges aggrieved by the seat matrix to send their complaints to the university’s authority concerned at least three months before the initiation of the admission process for a new academic session.
Challenging this order, St Stephen’s on Monday in its plea in the high court painted a picture that the single judge misunderstood the intent and purpose of over-allocation of seats in the initial rounds of admission, and violated its fundamental right to administer the college by directing admission to the students.
The excess allocation policy, the plea claimed, was never intended to create additional seats and was only a shortcut to ultimately end up with the total number of seats. “This is only an administrative convenience and cannot create any additional vested rights for students seeking admission,” the plea read.
St Stephen’s in its plea claimed that DU — contrary to its undertaking regarding extra allocation of seats and permitted intake — allocated more seats because of which the college could not admit such candidates.
The petition also stated that DU according to CSAS provisions could have only allocated only one candidate under the “single girl child” category in BA programme, and instead allocated 10 candidates, which is wholly “impermissible and untenable”.