W.P.(C)/14176/2022 of SNEHA Vs UNION OF INDIA AND ORS

NEUTRAL CITATION NO: 2022/DHC/004208

*INTHEHIGHCOURTOFDELHIATNEWDELHIDate of Decision: 10[th]October, 2022

+W.P.(C) 14176/2022 & CM APPL. 43338/2022SNEHA

..... PetitionerThrough:Mr. Gaurav Dhingra, Advocate.

versus

UNION OF INDIA AND ORS

..... Respondents

Through:Mr. Arjun Mitra, Advocate for R-2.Mr. Manish Kumar, SPC withMr. Vinod Tiwari, GP for R-1.

CORAM:HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE SANJEEV NARULAJUDGMENT

SANJEEV NARULA, J. (Oral):

1.Petitioner cleared the Joint Entrance Examinations and secured All-India rank of 21912, and rank 5647 in OBC category, on basis whereof shesought admission in Indian Institute of Technology, Indore in mechanicalengineering programme. Upon being provisionally allotted seat in saidinstitute, she was required to submit relevant documents for verification andpay ‘seat allocation fee’. Her grievance arises on account of her inability topay the seat allocation fee owing to technical glitch on the web portal ofRespondent No. 2 – Joint Seat Allocation Authority [“JoSAA”] on 26[th]September, 2022 (i.e., the last date of payment). In such circumstances,fearing loss of seat, she has invoked the jurisdiction of this Court, seeking

following prayer:

“(a)Respondent No. 2 to accept the Seat Acceptance Fee and admit thepetitioner in the allotted seat for B. Tech Course in IIT-Indore for theacademic year 2022”

2.Pursuant to order dated 06[th]October, 2022, JoSAA has e-filed itscounter affidavit vide diary No. 1681476/2022, copy whereof has been sentto the Court Master and is taken on record.

3.Mr. Gaurav Dhingra, counsel for Petitioner, states that Petitionerattempted to pay seat acceptance fee through net-banking mode but thetransactions did not go through, due to technical glitch on JoSAA’s portal.Additionally, he places reliance on ‘Schedule of Events of JoSAA 2022(Online Reporting)’ [annexed as Annexure P-1] wherein time for paymentof said fee was revised from 17:00 hours to 20:00 hours on 26[th]September,2022. This extension, he submits, can be assumed to be necessitated bytechnical glitches faced by candidates in payment of fee/ online reporting inabsence of any other plausible explanation by Respondents. concessiontherefore, be made for Petitioner and her application should be acceptedconsidering the technical difficulty, which is not attributable to her.Petitioner is meritorious candidate belonging to economically weakersegment of the society, who is being prejudiced for no fault of hers.

4.Per contra, Mr. Arjun Mitra, counsel for JoSAA, controvertsPetitioner’s case and points out that no proof of alleged attempts has beenannexed with the petition. Without prejudice thereto, he states that assumingPetitioner did face issues as alleged, the admission scheme being non-

NEUTRAL CITATION NO: 2022/DHC/004208

discretionary, no exception can be made for her. That apart, even ifPetitioner does cross this hurdle, her application would still be rejected inlight of fatal defects in her application viz. the caste certificate. Mr. Mitraexplains that Petitioner’s caste does not fall in the notified central list andOBC certificate annexed to her application does not comply with the normsset by JoSAA. Since Petitioner appeared as an OBC candidate in JointEntrance (Main) Examination [hereinafter, “JEE (Mains)”] (basis whicheligibility for seat in NIT+ institute is determined), as well as the JointEntrance (Advance) Examination 2022 [hereinafter, “JEE (Advance)”](which determines eligibility for admission in IITs), her candidature is liableto be rejected as she is not an eligible OBC candidate.

5.The Court has heard counsel for the parties. As pointed out byJoSAA, sufficient and adequate notice was given to all candidates to submitrequisite documents and pay the fee timely. As per the notified schedule ofevents, period for online submission of documents and fee paymentcommenced on 23[rd]September, 2022 and ended at 20:00 hours on 26[th]September, 2022. In response to JoSAA’s queries, Respondent No. 3 –National Informatics Centre [“NIC”] communicated details of Petitioner’spayment attempts [annexed as Annexure R-2/2 with the counter affidavit],as follows:

“Dear Sir,

Details are as follows for your queries.a. As per the log, candidate attempted the payment 4 times . Response for allthe attempts are as follows.

NEUTRAL CITATION NO: 2022/DHC/004208

we executed the double verification for multiple times, but did not get the successfultransactions. complete log is enclosedherewith.b. There are 543 candidates, who made payments during 5.00 pm to 8:00 pmduring on September 26, 2022.c. System are working as designed. There was no technical failure/glitchreported.Regards”

6.It appears that Petitioner made four attempts of payment on 26[th]September, 2022 between 17:10 PM to 17:29 PM. There is no explanationas to why she waited till the last date/time to complete the formalities.Further, it has been pointed out that on 26[th]September, 2022, total of 7702successful transactions took place on JoSAA’s portal, 543 of which, tookplace during the extended time period (between 17:00 hours and 20:00hours). If there were indeed server error attributable to JoSAA, it wouldhave affected all similarly placed candidates, and not just Petitioner.

7.No proof of text messages generally received during bankingtransactions such as one-time password [“OTP”] and the like, has also beenannexed. On specific query of the Court, Mr. Dhingra is unable to confirmwhether Petitioner received any OTP for processing the transaction or afailure message while attempting alleged net banking transactions. In thesecircumstances, and in absence of screenshot(s) or any other proof of any

NEUTRAL CITATION NO: 2022/DHC/004208

technical failure, the allegations of Petitioner remain uncorroborated andcontradicted by Respondents’ electronic records, which the Court has noreason to doubt. Moreover, when alleged technical glitches occurred,Petitioner did not reach out to the designated grievance redressal cell ofJoSAA, details whereof have been provided in ‘Business Rules for JointSeat Allocation for the Academic Programs offered by the IITs, NITs, IIEST,IIITs and Other-GFTIs for the academic year 2022-23’ [hereinafter,“JoSAA Rules”]. Only one representation was made on 26[th]September,2022 at 21:50 PM – much after the closing hours of web portal at 20:00 PM.It was incumbent upon Petitioner to be proactive and promptly seekassistance from designated authorities.

8.That apart, there is also considerable merit in Mr. Mitra’s submissionsthat Petitioner’s candidature has to be cancelled in light of the discrepancyin her caste certificate. As per Rule 5(v) of JoSAA Rules, seats of OBCNon-CreamyLayer[“OBC-NCL”]candidatesareallottedtothosecandidates whose backward class finds mention in the central list. The saidRule reads as under:

“Category tag OBC-NCL: This is assigned to Indian nationals who belongto the Non-Creamy Layer of Other Backward Classes (OBC-NCL) and areNOT Persons with Disabilities. Candidates must produce valid OBC-NCLcertificate to be assigned this tag. The backward class MUST be in theCentral List of OBCS.”

9.In addition to JoSAA Rules, candidates are required to abide withstipulationsmentionedinInformationBrochureofJEE(Advance)whereunder, clauses 3 and 15 lay down rules pertaining to OBC-NCLcertificates. Clause 15 states that OBC-NCL certificates must be issued after

NEUTRAL CITATION NO: 2022/DHC/004208

1[st]April, 2022, whereas, Petitioner’s certificate was issued prior to said date.

10.Undisputedly, Petitioner’s caste – MAHATO is not mentioned in thecentral list and thus, her candidature was based on wrong certificate.Therefore, even if Petitioner had made the payment on time, her candidatureas OBC-NCL would have been rejected. Insofar as certificate having beenissued before 1[st]April, 2022, the Court does not find the same to be anincorrigible error, and it could have been remedied when an objection wouldhave been raised to that effect at the time verification of documents.However, MAHATO class not being part of the central list is fatal errorwhich would deprive Petitioner of her candidature under the said category.Now that Petitioner does not qualify as an OBC candidate as perRespondents’ rules, for admission purposes, she would fall in the ‘generalcategory’ and as such her result/rank in JEE (Mains) would have to beredrawn. On this aspect, Mr. Mitra submits that since Petitioner had secured71.8024074 and cut-off score for general category is 88.4121383, she cannotbe said to have cleared JEE (Mains) and seek admission on the basis of herscore in JEE (Advance) and thus, cannot be allotted seat in Indian Instituteof Technology, Indore.

11.Under the scheme of examination, JoSAA Rules and InformationBrochure, no discretion is vested in JoSAA to make an exception, even ifsome seat(s) were to become available. Mr. Mitra points out that seatallotted to Petitioner has now been allotted to some other candidate, andalthough there may be scope for new vacancies arising in subsequent roundsof counselling, JoSAA cannot accommodate the Petitioner since she does

NEUTRAL CITATION NO: 2022/DHC/004208

not meet the eligibility criteria. It is well-settled position of law thatprocedure stipulated in information brochure/prospectus is binding upon allcandidates – who consent to abide by them while filling the form for suchexaminations. Thus, the Court finds no basis to issue mandamus to thecontrary and compel Respondents to defy their established norms/rules.[1]

12.For the foregoing reasons, no merit is found in the present petitionand the same is dismissed along with pending application(s).

OCTOBER 10, 2022nk

SANJEEV NARULA, J

1 See: Maharshi Dayanand University v. Surjeet Kaur, (2010) 11 SCC 159.