MUMBAI: Bombay high court directed Mumbai University to admit a Chhattisgarh student under the supernumerary quota reserved for students from Jammu & Kashmir after she failed to secure admission due to an accident.
The girl could not secure admission as she failed to attend the counselling session held by MU's Centre for Excellence in Basic Science. In her plea, she said she had met with an accident two days prior and was unable to walk.
A division bench of Justices G S Kulkarni and Somasekhar Sundaresan, in its Sept 12 order, said Lamya Khurshid Siddiqui has an excellent academic record and had scored 98% in the national level entrance test conducted for this course. It would be necessary to recognise the petitioner's merit and not let her opportunity to secure admission suffer for the sheer inability to attend an in-person meeting, the HC observed. The bench took note of the fact that two other students who had informed MU of their inability to attend the session due to medical issues were permitted to send a representative with all necessary documents and they were given provisional admission.
Noting that Siddiqui has suffered an apparent injustice solely due to her inability to attend the counselling session, the bench said it was persuaded to grant relief on the basic consideration that the two supernumerary seats would remain unutilised. Then the merit of the petitioner would be a casualty, the HC said. "Thus, recognising that the right to education being not only a statutory right but also a right that leads to the enjoyment of the right to life under Article 21, without creating any precedent since this is a peculiar set of facts, it would be appropriate to use one of the two unutilized supernumerary seats to accommodate her," it said.
The girl could not secure admission as she failed to attend the counselling session held by MU's Centre for Excellence in Basic Science. In her plea, she said she had met with an accident two days prior and was unable to walk.
A division bench of Justices G S Kulkarni and Somasekhar Sundaresan, in its Sept 12 order, said Lamya Khurshid Siddiqui has an excellent academic record and had scored 98% in the national level entrance test conducted for this course. It would be necessary to recognise the petitioner's merit and not let her opportunity to secure admission suffer for the sheer inability to attend an in-person meeting, the HC observed. The bench took note of the fact that two other students who had informed MU of their inability to attend the session due to medical issues were permitted to send a representative with all necessary documents and they were given provisional admission.
Noting that Siddiqui has suffered an apparent injustice solely due to her inability to attend the counselling session, the bench said it was persuaded to grant relief on the basic consideration that the two supernumerary seats would remain unutilised. Then the merit of the petitioner would be a casualty, the HC said. "Thus, recognising that the right to education being not only a statutory right but also a right that leads to the enjoyment of the right to life under Article 21, without creating any precedent since this is a peculiar set of facts, it would be appropriate to use one of the two unutilized supernumerary seats to accommodate her," it said.
