PIL In Bombay HC Alleges Incorrect Seat Allocation In MH Law CET [Read Petition]

Law students Aditya Roongta and Ashutosh Paibhale have filed a Public Interest Litigation in the Bombay High Court alleging that the allocation of seats under women’s reservation category in Maharashtra’s Common Entrance Test(CET) for law this year has several discrepancies.

A reservation of 30% of the seats in all institutes are required to be reserved for female candidates as per the provisions of a Government Resolution dated April 17, 2000. According to the petitioners the said GR is explicit in mentioning that the female reservation is to be applied horizontally not vertically. However, the petition states that the first list of seat allotments of the Government Law College (GLC) Mumbai, is wrong on account of the female reservation being applied incorrectly, i.e. vertically, due to which at least a dozen meritorious male students were denied a place in GLC alone. This mistake was found in the allotment list of all colleges and all caste reservation categories.

Although the PIL was filed on October 27, it was mentioned before the single vacation bench of Justice MS Karnik on November 7 and came up for hearing two days later. In court the government pleader accepted the petitioner’s contention that the allocation of seats under the women’s reservation category was wrong but was later rectified in the third round.

Horizontal application of the said rule means that if the final merit list already has requisite number of women candidates ie, 30% of the total students, then there is no need to allocate any other seats under this category. The petition also mentions that the entire purpose of the admissions through the Common Admission Process (CAP) is defeated as the allocations are made in contravention of the same.

The petitioners have sought the allocation of seats for the year 2016-17 in the LLB 3 year and 5 year course to be declared invalid and void. Also, the entire process of allocation be conducted again.Since a single bench cannot hear PILs, no interim reliefs were granted. The matter will now be heard once it is listed during the course of this week.

Read the petition here.