The main legal point established in the judgment is the necessity for conclusive verification before taking adverse actions and the importance of specific and justified decision-making by the authorities.

JUDGMENT

Mahesh Grover, J. - By this order, we propose to dispose of the above said Letter Patent Appeals bearing Nos.765, 771, 772, 776, 779, 780, 789, 790, 812, 890 and 1024 of 2017 and also Civil Writ Petitions bearing Nos.14278, 21816 and 27592 of 2017, as they involved common question of facts and law.

2. Some of the writ petitions/letter patent appeals have been filed by the institutes, while the others are by the students, whose careers are affected on account of the action of the respondents.

3. For the purpose of convenience, we draw the facts from CWP No. 21816 of 2017, wherein the institution has questioned the action of respondent-State, in cancelling the admission of the students.

4. In question are numerous courses to which the students were admitted, such as Diploma in Engineering (LEET), Bachelors in Engineering, Bachelors in Architecture, MBA Courses and Bachelors Diploma in Pharmacy. These are being run by the technical institutions and the students are granted access on the basis of marks obtained by them in the qualifying examinations.

5. The controversy centres around the cut-off date prescribed for admission i.e 15.08.2016. The process was started in June, 2016 for the session 2016-17. Although the admissions initially were to be concluded by 02.08.2016, the said date was extended to 10.08.2016 and later on upto 31.08.2018 with late fee. A public notice was issued by the respondents (on record as Annexure P-6), where list of students admitted, was solicited for editing/correction/updation of record of students admitted upto 15.08.2016 for the session 2016-17. This information was to be provided by 21.11.2016. The common thread that runs through all these cases, is that the information of students admitted upto 15.08.2016 could not be provided/uploaded on the web-site by the prescribed date i.e 16.08.2016 and some of the institutions provided it subsequently but prior to 21.11.2016, which was essentially a date given out in the public notice for edition/correction of the list of the students admitted.

6. The State did not accept this information provided by the institutions leading to a writ petition bearing No.25806 of 2016 which was decided on 11.05.2017.

7. The learned Single Judge did not agree with the plea of the students and the institutions by holding that not uploading the requisite information by 16.08.2016, would lead to a presumption of admissions being made beyond the cut-off date. This order having been passed on 11.05.2017, is now the subject matter of various Letter Patent Appeals and immediately after passing of the order, various appeals were preferred without appending the impugned judgment, considering that the examinations were scheduled for 16.05.2017. This court then passed the order dated 15.05.2017, permitting the students to take the examinations at their own risk and responsibility, which they have done and the results were kept in sealed covers. The same have been brought before us in the Court.

8. Learned counsel for the appellants/petitioners have contended before us that all the admissions were made prior to 15.08.2016 i.e cut-off date but the information could not be uploaded in time due to some technical snags or for some reasons peculiar to an individual institution, but the information was indeed supplied in all the cases upto 21.11.2016 which was the date intended for editing/correction.

9. It is further contended that merely because the information was not supplied, would not ipso facto mean an inference of admissions being made beyond the cut-off date and it is for the State to have physically verified such a lapse to identify those who were admitted beyond cut-off date so as to invite an adverse action.

10. Apart from that, it is contended that AICTE guidelines which bind the admission process to a particular date, cannot be applied to all the courses which were not covered by the AICTE regulations. It is stated that the MBA course particularly do not invite rigors of