Locus standi: Students will have to fight their own cases,says High Court

The PIL was filed by Advocate Sunil Kumar,challenging the criteria followed by the University for admission in undergraduate programmes. He pleaded that a student is taught only one subject in detail in graduation and the other two are not main subject and so the admission should be granted only on the basis of marks obtained by a candidate in the main subject in 10+2. Noting that he failed to establish his legal standing in the case,the Bench dismissed his plea and said students would have to approach either personally or through guardians if they were aggrieved in academic matters.

Similarly,while adjudicating the PILs relating to IIT,the Bench dismissed the PIL filed by one Chetan Upadhyaya,who had asked for a stay on the publication of results and a re-examination because of alleged errors in the question paper. As the Supreme Court had earlier questioned Upadhyaya’s locus standi in the case,Justice Misra took no time in throwing out his petition,holding he was neither a student nor could relate to them in any manner for entertaining the petition.

The other PIL filed by Professor Rajeev Kumar of IIT-Kharagpur also met the same fate,even though the petitioner’s counsel argued that his plea related to the discrepancies and non-transparency of the IIT-JEE examination system. Asked to respond,the counsel for the IIT said the petitioner too had no locus standi as no students,before the result or after it,had come to the court with grievances.

The Bench agreed to the contention and said it would dismiss this PIL too by a written order,a copy of which would be made available only on Thursday.

St Stephen’s changes admission criteria
The Supreme Council of the St Stephen’s College in a recent meeting has decided to go back to the pre-2008 admission criteria to the college. This is not good news for Christian aspirants,for the 60 per cent eligibility mark for them will be scrapped. It will now be reduced to 15 per cent less than the cut-off marks for general category students in each stream. Also,the vacant seats in the three per cent Physically Handicapped category among Christians will be transferred to the general category from this year.

80 new computers for each college: V-C
Delhi University Vice-Chancellor Deepak Pental told a meeting of Principals on Wednesday that each college will receive 80-85 new computers within the fortnight. “The 1 GB bandwidth promised by the National Knowledge Commission will be available in the next two months,” said Pental. Colleges have been asked to find space for a server room and make space for two computer rooms.