Compliance with safety and space regulations is mandatory to determine the intake of students in educational institutes.

JUDGMENT

Chandra Dhari Singh, J. The instant set of writ petitions has been filed by the petitioners under Article 226 of the Constitution of India for issuance of writ of mandamus for direction to the Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University (hereinafter referred to as the "Respondent University") to allocate 110 seats to the Ideal Institute of Management & Technology (hereinafter referred to as the "Petitioner Institute") with respect to BA LLB Five Years' Integrated Course for Academic Sessions 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22 and 2022-23. The details of the respective petitions are furnished hereunder:

FACTUAL MATRIX

2. Having perused the instant set of writ petitions, the matter has arisen out of the facts as detailed hereunder:

(i) The Petitioner No.1 i.e. New Millennium Education Society is a registered society. The Petitioner No.2 is a private self-financing college founded under the aegis of the Petitioner No.1 Society. The Petitioner No.2 imparts various courses including BA LLB Five Years' Integrated Course.

(ii) The Respondent No.1 is Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University which is the affiliating University of the Petitioner No.2 College. The Respondent No.2 i.e., the Directorate of Higher Education (hereinafter referred to as the "DHE"), Govt. of NCT of Delhi is the concerned authority for issuance of No Objection Certificate (hereinafter referred to as the "NOC") to the colleges affiliated to the Respondent University.

(iii) It is the petitioners' case that since the academic session 2014-15, the respondent No. 2 has issued NOC for 110 seats for the said course to petitioner No. 2 and the seat intake for by the petitioner No. 2 Institute has been 110. This seat intake has been reduced to 85 seats by Respondent No. 1 for the academic session 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22 and the same has been done for the current academic session 2022-23.

(iv) Aggrieved by these changes the petitioners had approached this Hon'ble Court by way of Writ petitions being WPC 7329/2018 {for academic session 2018-2019}, WPC 8175/2019 {for academic session 2019-2020}, WPC 8817/2020 {for academic session 2020-2021} and WPC 8862/2021 {for academic session 2021-2022} and this Court has granted interim relief in the four Writ petitions to the petitioners thereby allowing the petitioners with a seat intake of 110 as opposed to 85 seats as allocated by the Respondent no. 2

(v) It is the contention of the petitioner that the respondents have reduced their number of seats with the explanation that the Joint Assessment Committee (hereinafter referred to as the "JAC") in its report has recommended intake of 85 students in the BA LLB course.

(vi) The JAC in its report on 28.05.2019 for the academic session 2019-20 recommended 85 seats. In the JAC report, the total built up space available for conducting the concerned programme was stated to be 3267.45 square metres excluding basement. As per Unified Building Bye Laws 2016 (hereinafter referred to as the "UBBL-2016") the petitioner no. 2 is entitled to have its basement area counted in the built up space to be considered in the JAC report.

(vii) On 11.09.2019 this Court directed the Delhi Fire Services to conduct the inspection of the entire building, in particular the concerned basement, and thereupon report to the court as the whether it meets the fire safety requirements. The status report filed by the Delhi fire department stated that the building was found to be fire compliant and the fire safety Certificate has been issued