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The governing body of St Stephen’s College has decided that it will approach the Supreme Court against the Delhi High Court’s order directing it to admit non-minority students only on the basis of the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) scores, without conducting interviews.
The governing body passed a resolution to this effect in a meeting held on Tuesday. The decision was not unanimous as 5 of the 17 members recorded their dissent against this: two Delhi University (DU) representatives and three teacher representatives.
The Delhi High Court had last week said that the college cannot conduct interviews for the admission of undergraduate students belonging to “non-minority category” and directed it to admit them only on the basis of CUET scores. It had directed the college to withdraw its admission prospectus, which states that interviews will be part of the admission process, in accordance with DU’s instructions and issue a public notice declaring the amended admission procedure.
However, the admission prospectus continues to be on the college website and it has not issued a public notice notifying any change in procedure.
“The five members had dissented on the ground that this will create tremendous delay in admissions because the Supreme Court won’t decide the case in a day. What will happen to admissions this year? The university representatives also said that it is better to work in harmony with the university, and that there are other minority institutions in DU and elsewhere in the country, none of which have interviews,” said one of the dissenting members.
The University and College have locked horns over the latter’s admission procedure, with the college announcing in April that it will give 15% weightage for admissions to all seats to interviews conducted at the college level.
DU’s admission cycle for this year is running on a delayed timeline. After the announcement of CUET results, registrations will continue to remain open till October 10 and the first round of admissions will only be conducted after that. Vice-Chancellor Yogesh Singh has said that the university wants to begin the academic year for first-year students on November 1.
It is also learnt that one of the University representatives flagged the issue of the university communicating to the governing body that it is “constrained not to recognise professor John Varghese as principal of the college ever since his five-year term ended” in March 2021, and asking the college to follow UGC regulations on re-appointment of principals.
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