No admissions under new seats plan in Delhi University - Hindustan Times
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No admissions under new seats plan in Delhi University

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By
Dec 30, 2020 10:37 AM IST

Delhi University officials said no college has approached the administration with a request for admission on these seats.

The Delhi University (DU) on Tuesday decided not to implement the contentious decision to introduce five supernumerary seats in its 63 colleges, announced as a one-time measure to help registered students who couldn’t take admission due to Covid-19 pandemic.

Police barricades placed in front of the University Plaza on the day the first cut off list for admissions to Delhi University was released, at North Campus in New Delhi.(Amal KS/HT PHOTO)
Police barricades placed in front of the University Plaza on the day the first cut off list for admissions to Delhi University was released, at North Campus in New Delhi.(Amal KS/HT PHOTO)

Delhi University officials said no college has approached the administration with a request for admission on these seats. The plan, under which five students were expected to be given admission at the discretion of the college principals and the DU administration, had attracted criticism from both students and the faculty who said it would open doors to corruption.

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Last Tuesday, the university had issued a notification announcing introduction of 315 supernumerary seats in undergraduate courses across its 63 affiliated colleges -- five in each institution to registered students who could not take admission. The notification did not cite any specific reason for which a candidate would be considered for admission under the additional seats category. It read that the merit of the eligible candidate “must not be beyond 10% of the last cut-off issued by the college”.

The notification stated that the decision was taken at the request of principals and members of the executive council (EC) -- the highest decision-making body of the varsity.

DU Dean of Colleges and spokesperson Balram Pani on Tuesday confirmed that the administration has decided not to implement the proposal. “The decision has been taken since no college has sent the request for admission on these five seats. The administration had decided to introduce these seats only to help students amid the pandemic. We can’t go ahead with the proposals when no college has come forward to admit students on these seats,” he said.

December 30 was the last date for colleges to send the details of students who could get admission under the new rule.

Several principals said that they had never supported the decision. Ramjas College principal Manoj Khanna said, “The decision was taken without any discussion with the principals. In fact, there was no discussion with any statutory body in the university.”

Another principal, who wished not to be named, said, “The administration had said that the decision of introducing these seats was taken after getting requests from principals. Where are those principals now? It’s a plot to allow backdoor entries and due to huge criticism from principals, teachers, and students, the University has now decided to withdraw it.”

University registrar Vikas Gupta said one could not call the decision of implementing the notification as a “withdrawal”. “We decided not to move ahead with the decision since there have been no requests from the principals. We can’t call it a withdrawal. One of the reasons behind no requests can be that the university had given the leverage of only 5% from the last cut-off announced for any course in any college.”

Seema Das, a member of DU executive council (EC), said, “It was an attempt to introduce a discretionary quota in the admissions. The EC member had never supported such a decision as claimed by the administration.”

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  • ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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    Fareeha Iftikhar is a Special Correspondent with the national political bureau of the Hindustan Times. She tracks the education ministry, and covers the beat at the national level for the newspaper. She also writes on issues related to gender, human rights and different policy matters.

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