Delhi High Court
Sneha vs Union Of India And Ors on 10 October, 2022
$~79
* IN THE HIGH COURT OF DELHI AT NEW DELHI
Date of Decision: 10th October, 2022
+ W.P.(C) 14176/2022 & CM APPL. 43338/2022
SNEHA ..... Petitioner
Through: Mr. Gaurav Dhingra, Advocate.
versus
UNION OF INDIA AND ORS ..... Respondents
Through: Mr. Arjun Mitra, Advocate for R-2.
Mr. Manish Kumar, SPC with
Mr. Vinod Tiwari, GP for R-1.
CORAM:
HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE SANJEEV NARULA
JUDGMENT
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 she
sought admission in Indian Institute of Technology, Indore in mechanical
engineering programme. Upon being provisionally allotted a seat in said
institute, she was required to submit relevant documents for verification and
pay a 'seat allocation fee'. Her grievance arises on account of her inability to
pay the seat allocation fee owing to a technical glitch on the web portal of
Respondent No. 2 - Joint Seat Allocation Authority ["JoSAA"] on 26th
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
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By:SAPNA SETHI
Signing Date:12.10.2022
20:22:54
following prayer:
"(a) Respondent No. 2 to accept the Seat Acceptance Fee and admit the
petitioner in the allotted seat for B. Tech Course in IIT-Indore for the
academic year 2022"
2. Pursuant to order dated 06th October, 2022, JoSAA has e-filed its
counter affidavit vide diary No. 1681476/2022, copy whereof has been sent
to the Court Master and is taken on record.
3. Mr. Gaurav Dhingra, counsel for Petitioner, states that Petitioner
attempted to pay seat acceptance fee through net-banking mode but the
transactions did not go through, due to a 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 payment
of said fee was revised from 17:00 hours to 20:00 hours on 26th September,
2022. This extension, he submits, can be assumed to be necessitated by
technical glitches faced by candidates in payment of fee/ online reporting in
absence of any other plausible explanation by Respondents. A concession
therefore, be made for Petitioner and her application should be accepted
considering the technical difficulty, which is not attributable to her.
Petitioner is a meritorious candidate belonging to economically weaker
segment of the society, who is being prejudiced for no fault of hers.
4. Per contra, Mr. Arjun Mitra, counsel for JoSAA, controverts
Petitioner's case and points out that no proof of alleged attempts has been
annexed with the petition. Without prejudice thereto, he states that assuming
Petitioner did face issues as alleged, the admission scheme being non-
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discretionary, no exception can be made for her. That apart, even if
Petitioner does cross this hurdle, her application would still be rejected in
light of fatal defects in her application viz. the caste certificate. Mr. Mitra
explains that Petitioner's caste does not fall in the notified central list and
OBC certificate annexed to her application does not comply with the norms
set by JoSAA. Since Petitioner appeared as an OBC candidate in Joint
Entrance (Main) Examination [hereinafter, "JEE (Mains)"] (basis which
eligibility for seat in NIT+ institute is determined), as well as the Joint
Entrance (Advance) Examination 2022 [hereinafter, "JEE (Advance)"]
(which determines eligibility for admission in IITs), her candidature is liable
to be rejected as she is not an eligible OBC candidate.
5. The Court has heard counsel for the parties. As pointed out by
JoSAA, sufficient and adequate notice was given to all candidates to submit
requisite documents and pay the fee timely. As per the notified schedule of
events, period for online submission of documents and fee payment
commenced on 23rd September, 2022 and ended at 20:00 hours on 26th
September, 2022. In response to JoSAA's queries, Respondent No. 3 -
National Informatics Centre ["NIC"] communicated details of Petitioner's
payment 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 all
the attempts are as follows.
S.No Customer Id Response
1. 2203200651432220400 Response Date & Time: 26-09-2022
(BillDesk) 17:10:36|
Transaction Status: Failure (0399)
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2. 2203200651432220401 txn_status=0396
(ICICI) txn_msg=AWAITED
txn_err_msg=PENDING
tpsl_txn_time=26-09-2022 17:11:23
3. 2203200651432220402 Response Date & Time: 26-09-2022
(BillDesk) 17:23:45 Transaction Status:
Pending/Abandoned (0002)
4. 2203200651432220403 Response Date & Time : 26-09-2022
(BillDesk) 17:29:21 Transaction Status:
Pending/Abandoned (0002)
we executed the double verification for multiple times, but did not get the successful
transactions. A complete log is enclosed
herewith.
b. There are 543 candidates, who made payments during 5.00 pm to 8:00 pm
during on September 26, 2022.
c. System are working as designed. There was no technical failure/glitch
reported.
Regards"
6. It appears that Petitioner made four attempts of payment on 26th
September, 2022 between 17:10 PM to 17:29 PM. There is no explanation
as to why she waited till the last date/time to complete the formalities.
Further, it has been pointed out that on 26th September, 2022, a total of 7702
successful transactions took place on JoSAA's portal, 543 of which, took
place during the extended time period (between 17:00 hours and 20:00
hours). If there were indeed a server error attributable to JoSAA, it would
have affected all similarly placed candidates, and not just Petitioner.
7. No proof of text messages generally received during banking
transactions such as one-time password ["OTP"] and the like, has also been
annexed. On specific query of the Court, Mr. Dhingra is unable to confirm
whether Petitioner received any OTP for processing the transaction or a
failure message while attempting alleged net banking transactions. In these
circumstances, and in absence of screenshot(s) or any other proof of any
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technical failure, the allegations of Petitioner remain uncorroborated and
contradicted by Respondents' electronic records, which the Court has no
reason to doubt. Moreover, when alleged technical glitches occurred,
Petitioner did not reach out to the designated grievance redressal cell of
JoSAA, details whereof have been provided in 'Business Rules for Joint
Seat 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 26th 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 seek
assistance from designated authorities.
8. That apart, there is also considerable merit in Mr. Mitra's submissions
that Petitioner's candidature has to be cancelled in light of the discrepancy
in her caste certificate. As per Rule 5(v) of JoSAA Rules, seats of OBC
Non-Creamy Layer ["OBC-NCL"] candidates are allotted to those
candidates whose backward class finds mention in the central list. The said
Rule reads as under:
"Category tag OBC-NCL: This is assigned to Indian nationals who belong
to the Non-Creamy Layer of Other Backward Classes (OBC-NCL) and are
NOT Persons with Disabilities. Candidates must produce a valid OBC-NCL
certificate to be assigned this tag. The backward class MUST be in the
Central List of OBCS."
9. In addition to JoSAA Rules, candidates are required to abide with
stipulations mentioned in Information Brochure of JEE (Advance)
whereunder, clauses 3 and 15 lay down rules pertaining to OBC-NCL
certificates. Clause 15 states that OBC-NCL certificates must be issued after
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By:SAPNA SETHI
Signing Date:12.10.2022
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1st April, 2022, whereas, Petitioner's certificate was issued prior to said date.
10. Undisputedly, Petitioner's caste - MAHATO is not mentioned in the
central list and thus, her candidature was based on a wrong certificate.
Therefore, even if Petitioner had made the payment on time, her candidature
as OBC-NCL would have been rejected. Insofar as certificate having been
issued before 1st April, 2022, the Court does not find the same to be an
incorrigible error, and it could have been remedied when an objection would
have been raised to that effect at the time verification of documents.
However, MAHATO class not being a part of the central list is a fatal error
which would deprive Petitioner of her candidature under the said category.
Now that Petitioner does not qualify as an OBC candidate as per
Respondents' rules, for admission purposes, she would fall in the 'general
category' and as such her result/rank in JEE (Mains) would have to be
redrawn. On this aspect, Mr. Mitra submits that since Petitioner had secured
71.8024074 and cut-off score for general category is 88.4121383, she cannot
be said to have cleared JEE (Mains) and seek admission on the basis of her
score in JEE (Advance) and thus, cannot be allotted a seat in Indian Institute
of Technology, Indore.
11. Under the scheme of examination, JoSAA Rules and Information
Brochure, no discretion is vested in JoSAA to make an exception, even if
some seat(s) were to become available. Mr. Mitra points out that seat
allotted to Petitioner has now been allotted to some other candidate, and
although there may be scope for new vacancies arising in subsequent rounds
of counselling, JoSAA cannot accommodate the Petitioner since she does
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By:SAPNA SETHI
Signing Date:12.10.2022
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not meet the eligibility criteria. It is well-settled position of law that
procedure stipulated in information brochure/prospectus is binding upon all
candidates - who consent to abide by them while filling the form for such
examinations. Thus, the Court finds no basis to issue a mandamus to the
contrary and compel Respondents to defy their established norms/rules.1
12. For the foregoing reasons, no merit is found in the present petition
and the same is dismissed along with pending application(s).
SANJEEV NARULA, J
OCTOBER 10, 2022
nk
See: Maharshi Dayanand University v. Surjeet Kaur, (2010) 11 SCC 159.
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By:SAPNA SETHI
Signing Date:12.10.2022
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