St Stephen's admissions for non-minorities to be based only on CUET; Supreme Court refuses to stay Delhi HC order

The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to stay the Delhi High Court order that directed St Stephen's College, Delhi to admit non-minority students only on the basis of their scores in the Common Undergraduate Entrance Test (CUET) without any weightage to interviews. (St Stephens College v. Delhi University and ors).A Bench of Justices Ajay Rastogi and CT Ravikumar remarked that the matter would require detailed hearing, but said that it was not inclined to grant an interim stay on the order under challenge. This effectively means that admissions for non-minority students to the University this year will only be on the basis of their CUET scores, sans the 15 per cent weightage for interviews that the College had proposed in its prospectus. .The issue arose from the 2022 admission policy of St Stephen's College, Delhi. The College had moved the Delhi High Court against Delhi University’s letter that directed it to not conduct interviews of students seeking admission into the College’s undergraduate course in the non-reserved category.The letter also asked St Stephen's to employ a single merit list for admission of candidates belonging to all denominations of the Christian community, for whom the college reserves 50 per cent of its seats.DU further said that minority institutions like St Stephen's can give 15 per cent weightage to interviews while dealing with admissions in the reserved category, but for the unreserved seats, admissions should be only on the basis of CUET scores.St Stephen’s refused to follow the admission policy and declared that even with respect to unreserved seats, it will give 85 per cent weightage to CUET scores and 15 per cent weightage to interviews..The Delhi High Court last month held that the right of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions under Article 30 of the Constitution is not absolute and directed St Stephen's College to withdraw its 2022 admission prospectus.The High Court said that when observed from the prism of constitutional intent, it becomes clear that the right of a minority institution to manage its affairs is for the purpose of ensuring that the minority community is elevated to a position at par with the majority community.It held that the fundamental right under the Article 30(1) of the Constitution of India given to a minority institution cannot be extended to non-minority members.Therefore, it directed St Stephen's to issue a fresh prospectus giving 100% weightage to the CUET score for admission under non-minority category to its undergraduate courses.This led to the present appeal, filed through Advocate Romy Chacko..When the matter first came up for hearing, Justice Sanjay Kishan, an alumnus of St Stephen's, recused from the hearing "in light of the current environment." Later, Justice KM Joseph also recused after saying he had appeared for several minority institutions in the past..Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for the College before the top court, argued that the Delhi High Court ruling was bad in law. He added that interviews were something prescribed in the new National Education Policy as well, and that the College used it to see if the aspirants suited the ethos of the institute and the specific course they wanted admission in. "If my Lordships say no [to our argument that only marks should not determine merit], my Article 30 right to select is gone," Sibal submitted. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for Delhi University, said that they only wanted that admissions for unreserved category students are merit-based. Any stay on the order will have repercussions, as other minority institutions will also claim similar rights, he added. Counsel for the University Grants Commission (UGC) said the 15 per cent weightage for interviews gave the college a wide discretionary power..The Bench enquired if the interview process was objective and necessary. Justice Rastogi asked,"Mr Sibal, everyone may be desperate for admission but not fortunate enough to get it [admission in St Stephen's]. Does your interview process make it tougher? Our question is what is the mechanism and objective assessment available in black and white that you have?""If uniformity is now being brought in [through CUET], what is the relevance of the interview any more?" Justice Ravikumar asked Sibal..[Follow our live-coverage of today's hearing].Besides Sibal, Senior Advocate Mariyar Puthham with advocates Romy Chacko, Varun Mudgal, Praveen Kkumar Singh, Robin VS, Chandan Kumar Mandal, Aprajita Jamwal, Kozhy John, and Sudesh Kumar Singh appeared for St. Stephen's. Additional Solicitors General Sanjay Jain and Vikramjit Banerjee, Senior Advocate Arun Bhardwaj with advocates Apoorv Kurup, Nidhi Mittal, Saransh Kumar, Aparna Arun, Komal Aggarwal, Hardik Rupal, V Bhawani, Aakash Pathak, Nishank Tripathi, Harshita Sukhija, Akash Kishore, Ojaswa Pathak, Damini Garg, Raman Yadav, Prashant Rawat, Nring Chamwibo Zeliang, Akash Vajpai, Gauraan, Navin Kumar Sehrawat,Ashish Sharma, Vishnu Kant, and Mohinder Jit Singh represented the respondents. [Read order]