ARUNA MISHRA Vs. UNION OF INDIA & ORS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences (Respondent No.3 herein and referred to, hereinafter, as "IHBAS") issued an "Admission Notification", inviting applications for admission to the M.Phil. Clinical Psychology Course, for the session 2016-2018, conducted under the aegis of the University of Delhi. The number of seats advertised were mentioned, in the said notification, thus :

(2.) On 22nd July, 2016, a corrigendum was issued, by the IHBAS, to the aforementioned notification, which read thus: <FRM>JUDGEMENT_86_LAWS(DLH)1_2019_1.html</FRM>

(3.) Inasmuch as the entire controversy, in the present case, centers around these two documents, it is necessary to set out, at the outset, the effect thereof. A bare reading of the Admission Notification reveals that the number of seats advertised were 19, of which 10 belonged to the General/Unreserved Category, 1 belonged to the SC Category, 1 belonged to the ST Category, 3 belonged to the OBC Category and 2 each belonged to the foreign nationals and in-service categories. The corrigendum notification dated 22nd July, 2016 clearly stated that, consequent to a decision of the RCI (which was never made known to the applying public), the number of seats stood reduced from 15 to 10. Again, a bare reading of the notification dated 22nd July, 2016 reveals that the reduction in the number of seats was with respect to the 15 seats covering the General, SC, ST and OBC categories, which stood reduced to 10, with the 10 general seats being reduced to 6 and the 3 OBC seats being reduced to 2. There was no reduction either in the number of seats assigned for foreign nationals or the number of seats assigned for in-service candidates.