Supreme Court dismisses plea challenging Maharashtra’s entrance test for law courses

The court took objection to the petitioner’s failure to disclose the fact that he had appeared for the entrance test, which makes him an aggrieved party

The Supreme Court (SC) on Wednesday dismissed the special leave petition (SLP) filed by a student against the Bombay high court (HC), validating the state’s first common entrance test (CET) for law courses.

The court took objection to the petitioner’s failure to disclose the fact that he had appeared for the entrance test, which makes him an aggrieved party. (HT)

Around 30,000 students had taken the state’s first law CET. The first round of admissions for more than 20,000 seats at government and private law colleges under the Centralised Admission Process (CAP) culminated on Tuesday.

While dismissing the appeal, which was perhaps the last hurdle in the way law admissions that were marred by delays and confusion, the SC bench consisting of justices Madan B Lokur and RK Agrawal held the counsels for petitioner Kedar Warad, a law aspirant from the state, “suppressed the facts”. The petitioner had moved the SC after the HC, on July 5, had refused to scrap the CET as pleaded by Warad and Shalini Kotian, another law aspirant.

The court took objection to the petitioner’s failure to disclose the fact that he had appeared for the entrance test, which makes him an aggrieved party. The counsel didn’t submit an averment -- a formal statement by the petitioner -- as required by the SC.

“We had submitted the CET mark sheet of the petitioner, along with other documents, which clearly demonstrated he had indeed appeared for the examination. But the court kept asking for an averment. The judges didn’t look into the merit of the case, and instead dismissed it on the basis of a technicality,” said Talekar.

The petitioner had argued the students didn’t get adequate time to prepare for the examination, as the syllabi and exam notification was put up only a couple of months before the examination.

The HC, in its judgment, had noted, “The court would have been happier had the state notified the students about the exam pattern, syllabus etc. well in advance and granted them more time to prepare. But merely because the exam was not conducted in a manner suggested by the petitioner, we can’t declare the common entrance test and the entire process around it illegal, invalid, or unconstitutional.”

The SC judgment comes as relief to thousands of law aspirants, who were anxiously waiting for it. “If the CET had been scrapped, we would have had to go through the entire process again,” said Rhea Gupta, an aspirant.