The court emphasized the importance of reservation for OBC candidates to encourage higher education and held that the respondent's action in not approving the petitioner’s admission was arbitrary and unsustainable.

JUDGMENT :

Rekha Palli, J.

1. The present writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India has been preferred by a student belonging to the Non Creamy Layer of the Other Backward Castes being aggrieved by the respondent/University’s action in rejecting his candidature in the ‘Spot Admission’ round held on 31.12.2021 for the 2-year/3-year LL.M programme for the academic session 2021-22 on account of the caste certificate, submitted by him alongwith his application not being of the current financial year without giving him anytime to submit the requisite certificate.

Brief Factual Matrix

2. The petitioner, after acquiring his LLB degree from the respondent University, applied for admission to the 2-year/3-year LLM programme in the respondent University under the OBC category. As per the Admission Bulletin (hereinafter referred to as “the bulletin”), issued by the respondent for Post Graduate programmes, 2021-2022; the students were, for applying under the OBC category, required to furnish an OBC Non-Creamy Layer Certificate (hereinafter referred to as the “OBC-NCL certificate”) for the financial year 2021-22 as issued after 31.03.2021. The bulletin however, contained a provision enabling students in the OBC category, who were not in possession of an OBC-NCL certificate for the financial year 2021-22 as issued after 31.03.2021, to apply for admission by uploading either the earlier OBC-NCL certificate or the acknowledgement slip of having applied for issuance of an OBC-NCL certificate for 2021-22, subject to their producing the requisite OBC-NCL certificate for 2021-22 at the time of admission.

3. Since the petitioner was already possessing an OBC-NCL certificate dated 15.07.2018 issued by the Government of Uttar Pradesh, he, while submitting his application for LLM uploaded a copy of this certificate dated 15.07.2018. Based on his registration as an OBC candidate, the petitioner on 28.09.2021, appeared in the Delhi University Entrance Test, 2021 (hereinafter referred to as the “DUET 2021”) for admission to the LLM programme in which entrance test, he scored 180 marks out of a total of 400.

4. On 22.11.2021, the schedule for admission to the LLM programme in the Faculty of Law, Delhi University was published, wherein it was provided that two allotment lists would be issued; the first on 23.11.2021 and the second on 30.11.2021. It was also stipulated that in case if required, a third allotment list would be issued on 07.12.2021. The dates for issuance of the second and third allotment list was thereafter changed to 10.12.2021 and 27.12.2021, respectively. The petitioner’s name however did not appear in any of the three allotment lists.

5. On 30.12.2021, the respondent issued a notice informing the students that a fourth allotment list for ‘spot admissions’ to be carried out on the same date, would be published on 31.12.2021. To his good luck, the petitioner found his name in the fourth list which came to be issued on 31.12.2021. Vide a communication issued at 8.59 am on 31.12.2021, all the shortlisted candidates including the petitioner, were informed that they had to upload all the requisite documents between 9 am and 1 pm on the same day and a payment link for the payment of fees after the verification of documents would be generated by 10 pm on the same day.

6. Immediately after receiving the aforesaid mail, the petitioner uploaded all his documents including his OBC-NCL certificate dated 15.07.2018. While he was waiting to receive the payment link, he received an e-mail from the respondent at 10:27 pm, informing him that his admission was not approved as the OBC-NCL certificate submitted by him did not pertain to the financial year 2021-2022. On receiving the said communication, the petitioner, through his e-mail sent at 11.59 pm requested the respondent for time to submit the requisite OBC-NCL certificate for the financial year 2021-2022. Alongwith his request letter, the petitioner also enclosed a copy of the acknowledgm