Citing the judgment by the Supreme Court in 1992 over the admission process, St Stephen's College Principal Professor John Varghese, on May 26, wrote to the Registrar of Delhi University (DU) seeking to reconsider their request to follow the 'interview for all applicants' pattern. This comes after a letter by DU, on May 24, was issued instructing the college that "violation of the admission norms and policies of the university shall not be recognised by the university and will be treated as null and void for all purposes."
The principal of St Stephen's quoted a 1992 judgement by the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court which stated, “St Stephen’s, as a Christian minority institution, has its own admission procedures approved by the highest court in the land and guaranteed by the Constitution of India,” as stated in a report by the Hindustan Times.
In response to St Stephen's College's request, on May 26, to reconsider the decision regarding the admission process, Delhi University, on May 30, issued a letter stating that the judgment passed in 1992 by the Supreme Court has no relevance to the Common Universities Entrance Test (CUET) process. DU expects the college to align its admission process with the admission policy of the University. (This paragraph is missing context. Please start with what St Stephen's College said when asking to reconsider the admission policy where it mentions the SC judgment. Then you can go on to talk about DU's response)
The letter by the Registrar of Delhi University, Dr Vikas Gupta, read, "The judgment passed in 1992 by the Hon'ble Supreme Court (5 judges Constitution Bench) upholding the admission procedure was in the context of the admission of applicants based on marks obtained in qualifying examinations of 'different Institutions with diverse standards'. In view of the above developments with regard to CUET, the judgment has no direct relevance to the changed facts and circumstances as the admissions are going to be done based on the merit obtained by applicants through one standardised, equitable, fair, transparent, nationalised common entrance examination (CUET-UG)."
The Registrar, in the letter, said that the Supreme Court also inferred in Christian Medical College, Vellore case (2020) that, "In view of the law laid down in T.M.A. Pai Foundation (supra), it is apparent that the NEET/common entrance test is a device to standardise and computing equivalence between different kinds of qualifications." The letter also added that "prolonging the discussion any further shall be antithetic to the smooth and timely conduct of admissions and would unnecessarily lead to confusion and inconvenience to the candidates seeking admission."
St Stephen's College's admission prospectus or circulars, issued in April, stated that the admission process will be held based on an 85:15 pattern — 85% based CUET scores and 15% based on interviews. This move was initiated as St Stephen's is a minority college. But this was opposed by DU as all admissions to central universities are to be based on CUET scores.
