16 Students Move High Court Against DU College For Cancelling Admissions Under Sports Quota

The admissions were all under the sports quota.

New Delhi, Aug 16: Sixteen students have moved the Delhi High Court after a Delhi University college cancelled their admission over alleged irregularities in admitting them through sports quota. Daulat Ram College Principal Savita Roy sent out a notice on August 2, saying admission of those taken in after the first list stood “cancelled”, asking them to re-register on August 4 and 6, reported IANS.

Then, on August 7, the college sent out another note, asking 12 of the 16 students to seek admission under changed courses. For the four left out, the Principal said they did not have the “merit” to be in the college and had got admission through contacts and because of “favouritism”.  Through a writ petition, the students have managed to get a stay on the August 2 notice. The court has asked the college to allow all students in the class till the next hearing on October 11. “Sixteen of us decided to not re-register ourselves and went to court because the principal said ‘girls with high scores who didn’t get a chance earlier as they were not given their preferred subjects should be given a chance, and I feel bad about them, this is why you should re-register’. Which is unfair,” one of the students told IANS.

Roy stood by her decision against the four students and alleged irregularities by the sports committee in-charge in following the university guidelines. “I found that UG bulletin was not followed by the sports committee in admitting the students. For example in tennis, in which we have reserved two seats, the first and fourth ranks were given admission and not second and third,” she said.

In another example, she alleged that top chess players were denied admission in the college, despite the game being listed under the college’s name in the UG Bulletin, just “so that once these top players have got admission in other colleges, lower ranked candidates can be called for admission”. She has since removed the Sports Committee In-charge Kavita Sharma from her post. Sharma accused the Principal of playing “politics”, insisting that she has done no wrong, and said she has written to the college governing body against her removal. “Had I known that she (Roy) would do such a thing against me, I would have refrained from conducting the sports admissions,” she said.