HC stays admission of 22 in SMIT

Acting on a writ petition, filed by the OJEE Chairman, the Orissa High Court has stayed the order of a single judge, directing JEE to give admission to 22 candidates in Sanjay Memorial Institute of Technology (SMIT), Berhampur.

The Division Bench of Chief Justice V Gopalagowda and Justice SK Mishra has posted further hearing of the case to August 2.

As per the case records, the SMIT filed a writ petition challenging its exclusion from the seat matrix of JEE counselling. It had appealed to the court to extend the period of e-counselling of its B.Tech programme and direct the JEE to show the name of SMIT on the website.

While the single-judge Bench, in its order on July 2, directed the JEE to publish the name of SMIT with seat matrix in different streams of engineering on the JEE website, it also took a subsequent petition into consideration and directed for accepting applications of the students for change of option and admission to SMIT in the ongoing counselling. The Bench on July 13 again directed that the candidates shall approach the authority at nodal centres for the said purpose and in such an event the same shall be considered as extension of lock-in system till July 16.

As there was non-compliance of the orders, another petition was filed and the judge on July 27 directed JEE to allow the 22 candidates, who had filed applications to change their options, to take admission in SMIT by taking into consideration their ranks. 

Challenging the orders, JEE filed a writ appeal, before the Division Bench of Chief Justice, stating that it had submitted its objections before the single judge which were not considered. The JEE stated that selective unlocking was not possible.  The process would mandate that all the locked-in choices until that period of time be unlocked. The unlocking process amounted to re-counselling in the entire engineering stream, posing serious difficulties. Further, the process would take months and jeopardise the career of thousands of students by the delay.

It was stated before the Division Bench that by the time counselling started, SMIT did not have the approval of AICTE and only obtained it on July 7. The name of the institution was reflected on the website the next day. Therefore, the admissions, locked in prior to that, should not have been directed for change in any manner.

Considering the case, the Division Bench has stayed the order passed by the single judge, thereby withholding the admission of the 22 students.