DANISH HABIB KHAN Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioner before this Court appeared in the National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET), 2013, conducted for admission to MBBS Course. The petitioner claims to have secured 95.956 percentile in the said test. He applied for admission to respondent -Jamia Hamdard University in terms of the information bulletin and prospectus for the year 2013 -2014. The result of NEET was published on the website on 5.6.2013 and the petitioner received an SMS Alert from the respondent - Jamia Hamdard University on 7.6.2013 reminding him update his NEET scores and All India rank in Jamia admission, so as to complete the application and avoid rejection. Accordingly, the petitioner up -dated his percentile in NEET, 2013 on the website of the university on 7.6.2013. The respondent -university uploaded on 21.6.2013, the notice containing dates for counselling as also cut -off percentile scores and NEET, 2013 of All India rank of the candidates who had applied for admissions to MBBS Course of the said university. The counselling was conducted from 21.6.2013 to 29.6.2013. Since the petitioner did not appear in the said counselling, he could not get admission to MBBS Course of Jamia Hamdard University. The case of the petitioner is that he was under an impression that he would get alert message from the university, conveying the dates of counselling to him, but no such alert was received by him. According to him, he was suffering from viral fever and lock knee from 20.6.2013 to 4.7.2013. He claims to have downloaded the notice containing counselling dates from the website of the university after 6.7.2013 and is now before the Court by way of this writ petition.

(2.) CLAUSE 6 and 8 of the Information Bulletin and Prospectus for the Academic Year 2013 -2014 read as under:

(3.) THE learned counsel for the petitioner submits that the petitioner had no access to internet since he is residing in Loni which has no cyber cafe and the petitioner does not have the facility of internet available to him. Such averments cannot be verified in a writ petition. In any case, the reasons given by the petitioner for not being able to access the website of the university are hardly relevant. If the petitioner did not have internet facilities and there is no cyber cafe in the locality where he is residing, it was imperative for him or for a member of his family to access the website of the university on a regular basis, to ensure that he does not miss the dates of counselling. It would be important in this regard to note that though the counselling commenced on 21.6.2013, considering the percentile obtained by the petitioner, he had enough time at his disposal to access the website and then attend the counselling on the dates fixed for the applicants in reserved category who had obtained percentile between 97.1660 to 95.6553.