NEW DELHI: St Stephen’s College will now have to solely consider CUET scores while admitting non-minority students for UG courses. The college ought to go back on its plea challenge to DU’s new admission policy with the Supreme Court on Wednesday refusing to stay the Delhi HC ruling asking it to
follow the new policy.
The institute has been by the top court ordered to issue fresh prospectus. Now, it cannot hold interviews for admitting students to the general category. The DU for the first time had introduced CUET for adopting a mechanism for colleges including St Stephens, noted a bench of Justices Ajay Rastogi and C T Ravikumar in their order. “We find no reason to stay the operation of the judgement. Application for interim relief is dismissed,” the bench said.
Delhi HC on September 12 had asked the college to consider CUET 2022 score but had however authorised the college to conduct interviews in addition to CUET only to admit Christian students. A bench headed by Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma while asking St Stephen’s to withdraw its prospectus giving 15 per cent weightage to “interview” for admission to these unreserved seats, besides taking into consideration the CUET score of a candidate, however, ruled that the DU “cannot insist upon a single merit list for admission of candidates belonging to the Christian community regardless of denomination etc.”
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta for DU submitted that CUET was introduced for having a common standard of assessment. He also added that giving leeway to the university to give 15 per cent weightage to interview would be detrimental to the merits and will have pan India repercussions. “We don’t wish to give them this 15 per cent leeway,” Mehta said.
Underscoring the purpose behind CUET which was to bring in uniformity and standardisation, ASG Sanjay Jain also for DU added that out of the six minority colleges, only St Stephens was insisting on granting 15 per cent weightage to interviews. Hours after the SC ruling, St Stephen’s college removed from its website the contentious prospectus which was the centre of discord between the college and DU.