High Court regularises student’s admission in PU NRI quota case

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has regularised the admission of a five-year law course student under the NRI quota in Panjab University (PU) after observing that “institutional disarray” cannot be allowed to inflict hardship on bona fide candidates.

The ruling came in a case where a student was described “late applicant” even though he had applied for admission within the extended deadline for form submission. The university’s stand in the matter was that PU’s Dean International Students did not have the power to alter the last date for application submission.

The Bench held that a public institution could not escape accountability by pleading procedural irregularity after it failed to maintain internal administrative clarity. “In situations where institutional disarray prevails — where, metaphorically, the left hand is unaware of the right hand’s actions — the doctrine of apparent authority must apply,” the Bench of Chief Justice Sheel Nagu and Justice Sumeet Goel asserted.

Allowing the petition filed by student Anshiv Berry against the PU, the Bench asserted: “To permit the respondent-university to now disown its own official act on the plea of procedural irregularity would be to visit innocent third parties, who acted bona fidely in reliance upon such official representation, with undue hardship and prejudice. Such a course of action would be wholly antithetical to the principles of natural justice, administrative accountability and legitimate expectation.”

Coming down heavily on the varsity for seeking to disown the public notice, the Bench added it was neither reasonable nor practicable to expect a prospective applicant to verify the internal delegation of powers or question the competence of the issuing officer, once an authoritative communication—such as a circular or notice—emanated from a high-ranking university office.

“This pertains exclusively to the internal administrative framework of the institution and cannot justly be imputed to external parties,” the Bench held, rejecting the university’s contention that the Dean lacked the requisite competence to extend the last date for NRI admissions.

Berry, through senior advocate Gurminder Singh, had sought the quashing of provisional merit list dated September 28, 2022, issued by the PU for NRI category of the five-year BA/BCom LLB (Hons) integrated course. Berry had applied under the NRI category on September 5, 2022, in response to a public notice dated September 1, which extended the last date for submission of NRI/Foreign National admission forms to September 9.

Gurminder Singh told the Bench that the provisional merit list recorded him as a “late applicant”, effectively jeopardising his admission. Contesting this, he argued that Berry’s application was well within the extended deadline. He further submitted that the petitioner was undisputedly eligible under the NRI quota and had been denied his rightful claim due to an arbitrary classification.

Chandigarh