The Delhi University was on Tuesday directed by the Delhi High Court to respond to a plea challenging the University’s admission process for under-graduate courses for Scheduled Caste(SC) and Scheduled Tribe(ST) students this academic year.
Issuing notices to Delhi University and the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Justice G S Sistani sought their responses by October 11 on a petition filed by a group of students alleging DU’s admission policy for SC/ST students was “discriminatory”.
The petitioners alleged the Delhi University has failed to follow an uniform procedure for admission of SC/ST students and general category students for under-graduate courses.
“While the general candidates could register using the online facility from anywhere in India, SC/ST candidates had to come physically to Delhi with all their original certificates to even obtain the registration form. This prevented a lot of outstation SC/ST candidates from applying to the University,” the petitioner said.
With regard to the University’s Information Bulletin, the petitioners said “while a 70-page Information Bulletin printed in colour with a personal message from the Vice-Chancellor and lot of useful information like the last year’s cutoff marks, information about Grievance and Placement Cell, a detailed city map locating the colleges were given to the General Candidates, SC/ST candidates were given a shoddily-printed eight-page Bulletin without necessary informations.”
The petitioners further alleged the students of general category were allowed to register for all or any of the courses and colleges SC/ST candidate were not.
“An SC/ST is constrained by a limit of thirty choices, which is hardly enough to cover even single a course that is offered by around thirty to forty colleges. Moreover, the candidates have to indicate their choices in order of preference and allocation is done by the computer on the basis of their merit and the order of choice…,” the petition said.
The petitioners contend the University has adopted one procedure for general category and OBC students but SC/ST candidates were treated differently.
“This discriminatory procedure for admission is only applicable to SC/ST and not to OBC, although both SC/ST and OBC are governed by the same Act, namely the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act 2006,” the petition also said.
The court has fixed October 11 for further hearing of the matter.
