SC relief for student who lost IIT-B seat

Disposing the petition filed by Batra, the bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Dinesh Maheshwari and Hrishikesh Roy asked IIT, Bombay to regularise Batra’s admission despite the fact that the institute had admitted students to its capacity and had even begun classes.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed an exception for an 18-year old to complete his engineering course from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay after it had last month ordered the institute to provisionally admit him. Siddhant Batra was ranked 270 in the All India Joint Engineering Entrance 2020 but clicked the ‘withdraw’ link during the online admission process.

Disposing the petition filed by Batra, the bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Dinesh Maheshwari and Hrishikesh Roy asked IIT, Bombay to regularise Batra’s admission despite the fact that the institute had admitted students to its capacity and had even begun classes. However, the bench made it clear that this will not be treated as a precedent. On December 9, the SC issued notice on Batra’s petition and held, “By interim order, we direct that the petitioner should be permitted to join the respondent-institution and pursue his course subject to fulfillment of all other formalities.”

Batra had initially approached Bombay High Court but IIT-Bombay refused to admit Batra’s action to be a mistake.