OOPS: NEET 2021 candidates get allotted seats due to technical glitch, HC cancels admissions

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court recently clarified that cancellation of admission, which had been made on the basis of a technical glitch, does not mean depriving the candidates of their vested right.

Such an observation came from the HC bench comprising of Justice Sanjeev Narula, while it dismissed the plea by BDS aspirants who had been secured seats in Jamia Milia Islamia University because of a technical glitch of the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC).

"The answer to this question has to be in negative, as no candidate can be permitted to take benefit of an inadvertent error. The impugned notice does not take away any vested right or substantive rights of the Petitioners. It was merely a step taken to correct an error whereby, an unwarranted advantage had accrued in their favour, and the same does not amount to deprivation of a vested/ substantive right," noted the bench.

The concerned petitioners appeared in NEET UG 2021 and secured ranks 408869, 352153 and 160367. After the declaration of ranks, the petitioners applied for admission in Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) course in Jamia Milia Islamia University. All of them had been declared to be successful candidates in the first round of counselling and had been selected for admission in the institute vide publication dated February 1, 2022. Thereafter, an allotment letter had also been issued to all of them.

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Consequently, the petitioner completed their admission process by submitting the academic fee. Meanwhile, the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) issued a notice on March 16, 2022 declaring all the admission for BDS course made in the Round 1 and Round 2 of NEET UG 2021 as null and void on account of technical flitch in their system. Consequently, the Institute also set aside the admission of the petitioners through a notice dated March 17, 2022.

Challenging the notice of MCC, the petitioners approached the HC bench. After perusing the concerned notice, the court also took note of the fact that MCC had arranged for a Mop-up round of counselling and the petitioners had participated in it. However, they did not succeed in getting a seat in Jamia Milia Islamia University. Following this, they raised certain objections to the provisional list of selected candidates before the MCC.

The counsel for the petitioners, Mr. Tariq Adeeb submitted to the court that these objections had not been considered by the MCC before releasing the final list of selected candidates. Therefore, the petitioners approached the court and sought a direction to the authorities to set aside the notice by MCC and the Institute.

Apart from this, they also prayed to the Court to direct the authorities to lock the seats of the petitioners, which had earlier been allotted to them.

After considering the matter, the Court on March 30, had directed the Director General of Health Services (DGHS) to file an affidavit of a responsible officer and explain why it had not taken any action and cancelled the admission of the petitioners sooner, even though it came to know about the technical glitch on February 4, 2022. Complying with the court order, the authorities filed an affidavit on April 7, 2022 and explained that the technical glitch had resulted in such erroneous allocation of seats.

Referring to the concerned affidavit, the court noted, "In light of the above-extracted affidavit, it appears that there was a genuine technical glitch resulting in erroneous allocation of the seats, of which the Petitioners were beneficiaries. Despite the above clarification, Petitioners continue to insist that they should be declared as successful candidates in terms of the original allocation and seek quashing of the notice dated 16th March, 2022."

The counsel for the petitioners argued that in the first round of the counselling, majority of candidates had preferred to opt for admission in colleges other than Jamia Milia as their first choice on a hope that they would easily secure their admission in those institutes. Therefore, whoever opted for the Institute as their first choice in Round 1, had been selected for admission irrespective of their ranks since higher ranking candidates had chosen other colleges.

He claimed this to be the reason for which the petitioner had secured admission in the concerned institute in the first round itself. He also stated that there had not been any mistaken allotment by the authorities as the above-noted allocation had been within the bounds of the eligibility criteria, seat matrix and also the database of all the candidates' preferences.

It had further been argued by the petitioners' counsel that they had not opted for upgradation of colleges as they had secured admission in their desired course in Jamia Milia University. The counsel also submitted that the petitioner had forgone other admission opportunities available to them in various applicable quotas including, Muslim Quota, Muslim Women Quota, Muslim OBC Quota or internal students of Jamia Quota based on their ranking.

However, the court did not find force in these arguments and noted,

"The Court has considered the afore-noted contentions, and does not find any ground to issue a writ of mandamus, as prayed for. The Respondents have adequately demonstrated the factors which crept in the system, leading to erroneous allocation of seats to several candidates, including, Petitioners having lower ranks than the cut-off / last rank set by Respondent No. 1, in round 1 and 2 of counselling process. Therefore, the question that arises for consideration is whether a right stood vested in favour of the Petitioners, who were erroneously declared to be successful candidates on account of a technological glitch."

"The answer to this question has to be in negative, as no candidate can be permitted to take benefit of an inadvertent error. The impugned notice does not take away any vested right or substantive rights of the Petitioners. It was merely a step taken to correct an error whereby, an unwarranted advantage had accrued in their favour, and the same does not amount to deprivation of a vested/ substantive right," it added.

Sympathizing with the petitioners, the court observed,

"Although the Court acknowledges that this may be an unfortunate and harsh situation for Petitioners, whose hopes were unfairly raised by the allocation in the first round, nevertheless, it shall decide the matter in light of the undisputed and established facts before it. The seats could not have been allocated to Petitioners particularly when in the Mopup/ fresh round of allotment, the last cut-off AIR rank for admission was 28282 in Jamia Muslim Women Quota (Open) and 31954 in Jamia Muslim (OBC) Quota. Petitioners in both petitions, fall greatly short of this cut-off rank and as such, cannot be admitted in Respondent No. 1 college on the basis of merit."

Dismissing the petitions, the bench noted,

"Therefore, the cancellation of the seats allotted to the Petitioners was a rectification measure, and no violation of merit or admission standards has been done. Petitioners being candidates of lower merit, are not entitled to a seat in BDS course in Respondent No. 1 college that was inadvertently allotted to them in the first round."

To read the order, click on the link below.

https://medicaldialogues.in/pdf_upload/delhi-hc-180402.pdf

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