St. Stephen’s approaches Delhi HC’s division bench against single judge order asking college to admit 7 students

On Monday, Stephen’s counsel urged a bench of acting chief justice Manmohan and justice Tushar Rao Gedela urged the court to list the matter tomorrow, to which the court agreed.

The college has appealed against an order passed by a bench of justice Swarana Kanta Sharma on September 6 in which, the judge besides directing Stephen’s to admit the students, had upheld varsity’s policy to allocate extra seats in the initial round, which was disputed by the college.

The Common Seat Allocation System (CSAS) which grants the varsity power to allocate seats to students in the initial rounds to commence the academic session on time, is binding on all the colleges affiliated with the university’s, justice Sharma had observed. The court, taking note of the college’s conduct of preparing a distinct seat matrix and setting separate cut off marks for each of the programs, opined that the 13 BA programmes offered by Stephens must be considered as separate and distinct for the purpose of seat allocation and admission. In its 54-page verdict, the court had however refused to adjudicate on the legality “single girl child quota”.

The September 6 order was passed in a plea filed by seven students claiming that the college had neither accepted nor rejected their application despite completing all the formalities. Arguing through advocates Ravinder Singh and Raveesha Gupta, the students had claimed that they were facing undue hardships without any fault of theirs.

Stephen’s plea before the high court painted a picture that the single judge misunderstood the intent and purpose of over-allocation of seats in the initial rounds and violated its fundamental right to administer the college, by directing admission to the students.

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.

In the plea, the college claimed that the varsity contrary to its undertaking regarding extra allocation and permitted intake, allocated more seats, because of which the college could not admit such candidates.

The petition also stated that the varsity according to CSAS provisions could have allocated only one candidate under the category of the Single Girl Child in the BA Program, and instead allocated 10 number of candidates, which is wholly impermissible and untenable.