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DU Admissions 2019: HC orders to extend last date of registration extended till June 22
DU ADMISSIONS: HC also directs DU to follow old eligibility criteria, orders extension of online registrations till June 22
The High Court on Friday directed the Delhi University (DU) to extend the last date of registration for admissions in undergraduate(UG) courses to June 22. The direction comes on the last scheduled day of registrations.
A bench of Justices Anu Malhotra and Talwant Singh directed the university to extend the registration date while hearing three petitions challenging DU’s recently amended eligibility criteria for admissions for several UG courses including BCom (Hons) and BA(Hons) Economics.
The court has also ordered the university to allow students to apply for admission to UG courses based on the eligibility criteria of 2018-19.
The university, this year had made it mandatory to include mathematics in best of four subjects for admission in BA (Hons) in Economics and also fixed minimum 50% marks in math to apply for B Com (Hons). However, until last year, there were no such criteria fixed for any of these courses.
The registrations for admissions started on May 30 and were scheduled to end on June 14. The first cut-off was scheduled to be announced on June 20.
Despite several attempts, DU Vice Chancellor Yogesh Tyagi, Registrar Tarun Das and chairperson of the admission committee Rajeev Gupta did not respond to calls and messages.
A senior DU official said the administration will seek legal opinion in the matter. “The UG admission process began after a delay of 15 days this year and with the court order, the process will get delayed further. DU officials have called a meeting on Saturday morning to decide what can be done. DU may challenge the order. Till then, the online registrations will continue,” the official said, requesting anonymity.
Till Friday night, DU had received over 2.36 lakh applications for around 62,000 UG seats. Officials said that till Friday, maximum applications were received for English (Hons), followed by BA Political Science (Hons) and BA (programme).
The court also said these directions will not prevent DU from making changes to the eligibility criteria in the forthcoming year to its UG courses as required. It however, maintained that the changes have to be made in accordance with the law, “which would require a minimum of six months of public notice to the public at large”.
The petitions had contended that students were caught unaware as the eligibility criteria for some courses had been changed a day before the opening of registrations on May 30. They claimed that changes were illegal and violation of Article 14 of the Constitution as it was done arbitrarily, without any prior notice.
“There should be an admission branch in DU that can discuss and debate the changes to be made in admission process throughout the year. There is no point of constituting admission committees every year, only a few months before the admission process begins,” Rasal Singh, member of DU’s academic council, said.
(With inputs from PTI)
