MUMBAI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday confirmed the admission of 18-year-old Siddhant Batra to IIT-Bombay for the undergraduate bachelor of technology (BTech) course in electrical engineering on his plea that he had lost his seat to an “apparent mistake” while opting to withdraw only from further rounds during the online admission process.
A bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Dinesh Maheswari and Hrishikesh Roy regularised the admission for Batra, who had scored all-India JEE rank of 270, and said a “quietus” be put on this issue.
But, on the request of the IIT counsel Sonal Jain, the SC bench directed that its order not be treated as a precedent.
On Wednesday, Batra’s counsel Pralhad Paranjpe submitted to the SC that his was “not an adversarial litigation”. He informed the bench that the interim order was complied with and he was given admission by IIT-B last month. It was a provisional admission, said IIT-B, which had in its counter said it was Batra’s “conscious” move to withdraw from seat allocation. The student said it was a bona fide mistake as the reason he cited was the admission he already secured for the BTech course.
The IIT-B advocate said there were other students who had also withdrawn from the seat allotment process, and one of them had even filed a similar petition before the Calcutta high court, hence requested that it should be not a precedent.