Afford The Opportunity Of Deadline Extension Granted To JEE MAINS Aspirants To NEET Aspirant : Punjab And Haryana HC [Read Order]

The Punjab and Haryana High Court, on Friday, issued an interim order affording the opportunity of deadline extension, granted to JEE (Main) 2020 engineering applicants by the Union Education Minister via a tweet, to aspiring medical student for NEET, 2020 as well.

Justices Rajan Gupta and Karamjit Singh were considering the grievance of the petitioner that he was not able to apply for National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (UG), 2020 as he had already taken admission in Carleton College, Northfield, MN, USA commencing in September, 2020. However, due to the outbreak of Covid Pandemic, borders of various countries were sealed.

In the meanwhile, the petitioner had noticed a tweet made by the Education Minister of India in the following terms:-

"Students who dropped the idea to study abroad, here is your chance to pursue your studies in India. I have advised @ DG-NTA to give one more opportunity to students to submit new/complete online application form for JEE (Main) 2020. Hurry! Forms available till 24th May."

The division bench observed that in light of the current circumstances, the petitioner had a legitimate expectation that the same facility as above would be extended to aspiring students of medical stream.

The Bench remarked that though under normal circumstances, the Court would not have taken the tweet into consideration but it is being noticed that "tweets by the official authorities are now starting to occupy the importance of official declarations".

"We are not aware whether such declarations are backed by any official file in which the entire issue is dealt with", conceded the bench.

However, as an interim measure, the bench required that the respondent authorities would accept the application with the accompanying documents to be submitted by the petitioner.

The Bench added that this interim measure shall, however, be subject to the final outcome of the writ petition.

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