The main legal point established in the judgment is the binding nature of the Rules of Business on all participants and the consequences of non-compliance with the grievance redressal mechanism.

JUDGMENT

1 Rule.

Rule made returnable forthwith.

By consent of counsel for the parties heard finally.

2 By this Petition, the Petitioner is seeking order and direction of this Court to the Respondents to permit Petitioner to pay the Seat Acceptance Fees and participate in the admission process and to admit the Petitioner to the seat allotted at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay for Civil Engineering (4 years, Bachelor of Technology) or to any other seat that may be available in any of the Institutes of Technology preferably at Mumbai or Delhi, in any of the stream.

3 Petitioner is a student belonging to the scheduled caste category, who has passed the Joint Entrance Examination ( JEE) Advanced 2021 and has scored All India Rank (CRL) 25894 and Scheduled Caste (SC) Rank 864 and was allotted seat at the IIT, Bombay for Civil Engineering (4 years, Bachelor of Technology) (B.Tech. Course).

4 It is the case of the Petitioner that pursuant to the Business Rules XVIII Clause 40 for Joint Seat Allocation for the Academic Programs offered by IITs, NITs, IIEST, IIITs and other GFTIs for the academic year 2021-22 issued pursuant to a brochure dated 15/10/2021, Petitioner followed the steps mentioned therein. He firstly accepted the seat under the Slide option for the said academic program and then as step 2 uploaded the required documents as per Annexure-3 on the Joint Seat Allocation Authority ( JoSAA) portal on 29/10/2021. However, he could not make payment of the Seat Acceptance Fees on 29/10/2021 as Petitioner was falling short of money. Thereafter on 30/10/2021 after his sister transferred money into his account, he first attempted to make the payment by online mode at 9.51 p.m. and again at 9.58 p.m. and thereafter again on 31/10/2021 at 11.44 a.m. However, during all these attempts to make the payment, he received a message sorry, unable to process request. Please try later and/or the specific request cannot be processed and another message was invalid server access. It is submitted that though Petitioner was making continuous attempts to make the payment of the said fees, Petitioner was unable to make the said payment due to technical error and server error. In support of his case, the Petitioner has annexed screenshots and access history to the petition.

5 Petitioner states that he tried to make the Seat Acceptance Fees from 9.51 p.m. on 30/10/2021 and also continued his attempts to make the said payment by visiting Cyber Cafe on 31/10/2021, but he was unsuccessful in doing so. The Petitioner thereafter started contacting JoSAA Respondent No. 2 through telephone but his calls went unanswered. He addressed email to the Respondent No. 2 requesting for redressal of his grievance (as provided in Rule 77 of Rules of Business) but did not receive any response. The Petitioner submits that thereafter he has physically visited Respondent No. 2 on 1st November, 2021 in the morning at 09.00 a.m. and requested the officials to accept the Seat Acceptance Fees in any other alternate manner and permit the Petitioner to participate in the admission process, however, the officials of Respondent No.2 expressed their inability to help the Petitioner.

6 Thereafter, Petitioner has contacted his lawyer in Mumbai and has filed this Petition.

7 Petitioner submits that the admission counselling process is still in progress and Round 4 is going on and there are a total of 6 rounds. He submits that he is a meritorious student, who has been allotted a seat at the prestigious IIT, Bombay for a B.Tech. Course in Civil Engineering and urges this Court to intervene in the matter in the interests of justice.

8 Learned counsel for Petitioner Ms. Jyoti Chavan, relies upon the orders dated 09/12/2020 and 06/01/2021 of the Honble Supreme Court in the case of Siddhanth Batra Vs. Director, IIT Bombay & Ors. (Civil Appeal No.4029 of 2020) to submit that in the case of an inadvertent error in withdrawing from the admission, the Supreme Court regularised the admiss