JNU was imposed with a heavy fine for complete lack of Assistance in the Admission Process

Sabareesh Pillay | School of Law, University of Mumbai Thane Sub-Campus | 5th September 2020

Nishant Khatri Vs Jawaharlal Nehru University

FACTS:

In this case, the petitioner had applied for the M.Sc. Ph.D. integrated program, the minimum criteria to gain admission in this program was to obtain 35% of the total 70 marks. And if an applicant passes the needed score he would be called up for an interview. The petitioner in spite of scoring more than the required marks for an interview, was not called up for one. To gain further clarification the petitioner raised this issue with the authorities of JNU who said that according to their admission policy, the numbers of aspirants that could be called for the interview was restricted to three times the total number of vacancies and thus, since there were only 8 vacancies only 25 candidates were called for the interview. 

ISSUE:

Why was the Petitioner in spite of scoring the qualifying threshold in the M.Sc Ph.D program not called up for an interview and what really were the required marks that the applicants had to secure to be called up for an interview?

PETITIONER CONTENTION:

The petitioner contended that even after securing the required marks for clearing the entrance exam, he was not called up for the interview. Further he pointed out that the JNU claims to have 8 vacancies for the program and thus only invited 25 applicants for the interview, but instead they filled in 9 positions so in that case, more applicants should have been called for the interview.

RESPONDENT CONTENTION:

The respondents contended that according to their admission policy- “which reads as follows: – “Candidates belonging to SC/ST/OBC category who are selected on their own merit with General Category candidates are not counted under reserved quota.”. and the one extra vacancy that we have under the physically handicapped category was filled up by an applicant of the unreserved category as they were no qualified applicants in the former category.

JUDEMENT:

The single bench of Justice rajiv shekhdar observed that some of the admission policies of JNU was framed inefficiently, the court also said that the vacancy explanation given by the university is not valid as they had taken in 9 applicants while claiming that they could only take in 8. The court pointed out that when the RTI was filed regarding the release of the merit list, no satisfactory action had been taken up by the counsel of JNU. Thus keeping in view the whole process was conducted the court came to the conclusion that there was a complete lack of assistance by JNU and as the petitioner had asked for relief the court ordered the Jawaharlal Nehru University to pay RS 75, 000  as relief.