Would Have Negative Effect Of Derailing Admission Process: Delhi HC While Dismissing Plea Of A Student Seeking Retest Of CUET
The Delhi High Court has dismissed a plea filed by a female student who prayed for conducting a retest of the Common University Entrance Test (UG)-2023 (hereinafter CUET) on the ground that it would negatively affect the admission process.
A Single Bench of Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav held, “… this court does not find any merit in interfering into the present matter, at this stage, as the results of the said examinations have already been declared and the counselling is likely to commence soon. At this stage, any direction to the effect of arranging or assigning the merit position to the petitioner, who could not appear in the said examination, would have the negative effect of derailing the admission process.”
The Bench refused to interfere in this matter as the examination results were already declared.
Advocates Parmod Kumar Sharma and Prashant Bajaj represented the petitioner while Standing Counsel Sanjay Khanna and Advocates Karandeep Singh and Apoorv Kurup represented the respondents.
In this case, the petitioner filed a writ petition praying for directions to the respondents to conduct a retest of the CUET on account of her inability to appear for the exam for Psychology subject that was conducted in June month of this year. The petitioner had completed her Class 12th in the Humanities stream in 2023 and thereafter, being desirous of doing graduation in Psychology subject, filled up the form for CUET (UG)-2023.
As per the public notice, the National Testing Agency (NTA) specifically announced that the release of admit cards for the exam would take place three days before the actual date of the exam. Relying upon such information, the petitioner planned to go abroad for a vacation along with her parents. However, the NTA made admit cards available to the petitioner through email only one day before the exam due to which she could not appear for the same as she was abroad, and even after communicating her issue to the authorities, no response was received.
The High Court in view of the above facts noted, “It is thus seen that since the examination was scheduled for 15.06.2023 and if the admit cards were made available to the candidates starting from 13.06.2023, there is sufficient compliance of the notice dated 30.04.2023 issued by respondent no.2-NTA.”
The Court said that no fault can be attributed to the respondents in not responding to the e-mails/communications of the petitioner for allowing her to appear in the buffer examinations.
“So far as the conduct of examination on the buffer dates is concerned, as is evident from a perusal of the public notice dated 11.06.2023, the buffer dates for the examination were scheduled for some States and Union Territories, names thereof have been mentioned in the said notice and the same was not for the candidates who themselves missed the examination on 15.06.2023 to 17.06.2023”, observed the Court.
Accordingly, the High Court dismissed the petition.
Cause Title- Akshita Sabharwal v. The Secretary, Department of Higher Education & Ors. (Neutral Citation: 2023:DHC:5309)
