Student moves HC, challenges Delhi's St Stephen college admission rules

DU and St Stephen’s are at loggerheads over the admission policy.

The Delhi high court on Wednesday sought the responses of St Stephen’s College and Delhi University (DU) on a plea seeking direction to the college to ensure admissions to “unreserved seats” in undergraduate courses is done only on the basis of the marks obtained by the students in the Common University Entrance Test (CUET), as mandated by the varsity.

Representational image

A bench of acting chief justice Vipin Sanghi and justice Sachin Datta issued notice to St Stephen’s College, DU and the University Grants Commission (UGC) on the petition filed by a law student, Kanika Poddar, who has claimed that she will be appearing for the CUET exams in the near future.

DU and St Stephen’s are at loggerheads over the admission policy. While the university has asked institutes to grant admissions to unreserved seats based solely on CUET scores, the college has said that it will only give 85% weightage to the entrance test and will give 15% weightage to a personal interview of candidates.

The petitioner, through advocate Akash Vajpai, has said the DU’s academic council, in its meeting on March 22, 2022, accepted the recommendations of its standing committee to use CUET as a basis for admission in undergraduate courses from the academic year 2022-23 onwards for all its colleges, including minority colleges like St. Stephen’s College. It also said there will be separate merit list for the unreserved seats in minority colleges where admission will be done based only on the marks of CUET.

It said that on April 5, the varsity issued its admission policy for the academic year 2022-23, and on its last page of the Bulletin of Information, it specifically mentioned that admission to the unreserved seats in its minority colleges will be done only on the basis of marks obtained in CUET while on reserved seats, minority colleges can give 15% weightage to the interview and 85% weightage to the CUET score at the time of admission.

It alleged that St Stephens refused to follow the instructions of Delhi University and on April 20 issued a press release along with the admission notice stating that the college will conduct interviews for both reserved and unreserved seats and give 15% weightage to interview and 85% weightage to CUET marks at the time of admission in its undergraduate courses.

The matter would be heard on July 9.

It said the college has issued its prospectus for the undergraduate courses for the academic year 2022-23 which states that it will adopt the CUET as the eligibility criteria with 85 per cent weightage for CUET and the college’s interview for shortlisted candidates with a weightage of 15 per cent for its unreserved seats which is clearly contrary to the admission policy of the university.

It said according to some media reports, the Registrar of the university again wrote a letter to the college and warned them that if the prospectus issued by the college is not withdrawn and conduct any admission based on its own admission policy, the varsity will not accept those admission and they will be treated as null and void.