NIT directed to give admission to petitioner

Aurangabad: Justice Ravindra V Ghuge from the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court comprising issued directives to admit the petitioner to the National Institute of Technology (NIT).

According to details, Shaikh Riyan Shaikh Eqbaloddin a student from Hingoli was denied admission to engineering just because the website was hanging.

After HSC, Riyan Shaikh secured 91 per cent marks in Joint Entrance Examination-(JEE)-Main in 2022 and registered for IIT/NIT admission with Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JOSAA).

He transferred the Rs 38,000 fee to the Central Seat Allocation Board (CSAB) after the counselling. When the candidate tried to deposite the remaining fees, but, was unable to do so because of technical error on the portal. The CSAB returned the fee of Rs 38,000 to the student's account after three days.

The candidate made phone calls and sent e-mails many times to the CSAB, but, he did not get a satisfactory response. The students filed a petition through advocate S M Salim in the HC.

The petitioner’s lawyer argued that in such cases, the Supreme Court has ordered that if a student is not admitted due to technical glitches in the website, he should be admitted. The court said the student had the right to take admission to NIT Nagpur (which has vacant seats) under article 227 of the Constitution. Adv Ashraf Patel assisted adv Salim.

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What happened actually?

The fee was debited from the bank account of student on October 28, 2022, and deposited to the account of the chairman of CSAB (Mumbai) within time. The CSAB returned the fees to the candidate’s account after three days (on November 2, 2022) citing not paying required fees. The court directed CSAB and NIT (Rourkela, Odisha) to keep one seat vacant for the candidate considering the pecular case. The candidate visited CSAB office in Kharagpur where officers expressed their inability to help him even though he had paid fees on time. So, he filed a petition.