Delhi High Court: In a petition filed by Shubham Chauhan (petitioner), a deserving and meritorious student belonging to the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) quota being aggrieved by the cancellation of his provisionally allotted seat, on account of his failure to pay the seat acceptance fee by the deadline, Vikas Mahajan J., held that the court cannot issue a direction to the Respondent to allot a seat to the Petitioner despite the Petitioner having failed to deposit the seat acceptance fee on time. However, the Court directed the respondent to allow the Petitioner to continue in the Mathematics and Computing (five years integrated Master of Technology) Programme at IIT (ISM) Dhanbad (Respondent 4) against a supernumerary seat.
The Petitioner being successful in Joint Entrance Exam (Advanced) 2022, secured GEN-EWS rank 600 and was provisionally allotted a seat in the ‘Indian Institute of Technology (ISM) Dhanbad’ for the program – ‘Mathematics and Computing’. On being provisionally allotted the seat, the Petitioner was required to complete the steps in accordance with the procedure laid down in Rule 41 under Section XVIII of the JoSAA Business Rules, 2022. But due to the delay in the arrangement of funds and inspite of repeated attempts for payment, seat allocation could not be completed before the deadline.
The Petitioner was, however, informed by Joint Seat Allocation Authority, 2022 (JoSAA) (respondent 3) vide email that failure to pay the seat acceptance fee by the deadline leads to cancellation of the provisionally allotted seat and the candidate is not to be considered for seat allocation in subsequent rounds. Thus, the instant petition was filed. The Court, as an interim measure, permitted the petitioner to join subsequent rounds of JoSAA 2022 Counselling but instead of allowing the Petitioner to participate in the subsequent rounds of counseling and adjusting him against the available vacant seats, the Respondents created and allotted a supernumerary seat to the Petitioner in IIT (ISM) Dhanbad, in the Mathematics and Computing (five years integrated Master of Technology) Programme.
On perusal of the record submitted by the petitioner regarding the time of credit of deposits in the petitioner’s father’s bank account to establish that funds were sufficient in the account to pay for the ‘seat acceptance fee’, and other reason(s) for declining petitioner’s fund transfer requests read along with Rule 41 and Rule 55 under Section XVIII of the Business Rules, the Court noted that the transaction from the petitioner’s father’s bank account maintained with ICICI Bank could not go through as the card was not active for online transactions. Similarly, the reason for the transaction being rejected by the Indian Bank was that the maximum limit for a transaction was only Rs. 25,000/- whereas the transaction in question which was attempted by the Petitioner was for an amount of Rs. 35,000/-. Thus, the failure to deposit the seat acceptance fee before the deadline was on account of the reasons attributable to the petitioner and not on account of any technical glitch in the portal.
The Court remarked that Business Rules forewarn the candidates to keep their documents handy and make suitable arrangements for making the requisite payments well in advance. The Petitioner also had the option to deposit the same through cash in any branch of the State Bank of India, in event of online payment failure, which was not availed by the petitioner.
Placing reliance on Maharishi Dayanand University v. Surjeet Kaur, (2010) 11 SCC 159, and Pallavi Sharma v. College of Vocational Studies, 2015 SCC OnLine Del 10249, the Court held that the court cannot issue a direction to the Respondent to allot a seat to the petitioner despite having failed to deposit the seat acceptance fee on time.
Interestingly, however, the Court observed that the Petitioner has been allotted a supernumerary seat by the Respondents on their own and the Petitioner has been attending classes, thus, it will not be appropriate to disturb the petitioner’s admission in Mathematics and Computing (five years integrated Master of Technology) Programme at IIT (ISM) Dhanbad at this stage.
[Shubham Chauhan v Union of India, 2023 SCC OnLine Del 1008, decided on 17-02-2023]
Advocates who appeared in this case :
Mr. Utkarsh Singh, Md. Tauheed Arshi, Md. Humaid and Mr. Shivam Rajput, Advocates for the Petitioner;
Mr. Mukul Singh, CGSC with Ms. Ira Singh, Adv. for the R-1/UOI;
Mr. Arjun Mitra, Adv. for the R-3.