Supreme Court tells IIT-Bombay to admit the teen who lost B.Tech seat by clicking wrong link

Siddhant Batra, an 18-year-old student who is from Agra had scored an all India rank of 270 at JEE. He lost his seat for a B.Tech Electrical Engineering course at IIT Bombay by inadvertently clicking on a wrong link which was meant for withdrawing the application. SC came to the rescue of the student on Wednesday by permitting him to join and pursue his classes.

A bench headed by Justice S.K. Kaul took note of the submissions of lawyer Pralhad Paranjpe on behalf of the student and asked the IIT Bombay to grant provisional admission to him.

The bench of judges comprising of Justice Dinesh Maheshwari and Justice Hrishikesh Roy, said, “There is something known as common sense too, why would a meritorious student who had already got admission want to cancel it?” Justice Kaul also said, “All three of us have discussed. We are all in ad idem (meeting of minds)”.

They issued a notice to the institution and fixed the plea of Siddhant for hearing after winter break. Paranjpe said the admission would be subject to the final decision of the apex court on the plea of the student.

The plea was filed in the apex court after the Bombay High Court consisting of a division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice G S Kulkarni on 23 November dismissed it. It cited the submissions of the IIT to restore his seat saying it cannot intervene at this stage as all the seats for the course were full and they had to follow admission rules. It also said that Siddhant could apply again next year for JEE (Advanced).

In his petition to the SC, Batra had sought a direction to the IIT to consider his case on humanitarian grounds. He mentioned how he had lost his father and his mother too, and he worked hard to eliminate all the obstacles to earn this seat only to lose it to a wrong click!

He requested the creation of an additional seat to undo his loss.

According to the plea filed by him through advocate Pralhad Paranjpe, to the top court focused, while filling out the admission process online, he came upon a page with ‘freeze’ option, which he thought meant confirming the seat and the completion of his admission process. The petition said, “On October 31, 2020, when he was surfing the IIT portal to check for further updates, he came upon a link which carried a declaration that read ‘I would like to withdraw from the seat allocation process of JoSAA (Joint Seat Allocation Authority)’.”

When the final list of students was uploaded on the IIT portal, in November 2020, his name was excluded. The IIT, in its order, however, said the withdrawal option was a “conscious” two-step process. Sonal Jain, the IIT counsel said, Batra had frozen his seat which as per rules alone indicated that he didn’t want to proceed for further rounds. He quoted rules of business for the admission process which said candidates who want to withdraw before the final round can do so and the ‘seat acceptance fee’ gets refunded, adding that once a candidate has withdrawn then his or her seat stands cancelled.


A blog by Ruqayya Asif

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