Supreme Court issues notice on plea challenging cancellation of admission process by NLU Tripura for 2022-23

The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued notice on a plea challenging the cancellation of the admission process initiated by National Law University, Tripura for the academic session 2022-23 after all academic formalities were completed [Somya Sanjay and Others v. National Law University Tripura Agartala and Others]. .A Bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Abhay S Oka sought a response from the Registrar of NLU Tripura, the Consortium of NLUs, the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the State of Tripura.The Court posted the matter for hearing on February 3..Sixteen students have moved the apex court seeking quashing of the notification dated December 19, 2022 issued by NLU Tripura. As per the notification, the admission process for this academic year was cancelled for want of state domicile quota, and admission fees paid by selected students were refunded.The notification was issued pursuant to a communication by the Director of Higher Education Department, Government of Tripura dated December 16. The petitioners have sought quashing of this notification as well..In their plea, the petitioners have prayed for directions to NLU Tripura to resume the admission process for academic session 2022-23. Alternatively, a direction was sought to the Consortium of NLUs and the UGC to accommodate the petitioner students in any of the other National Law Universities across India, so that they do not lose a whole academic year.The petitioners stated that NLU Tripura's move to cancel admissions is directly in violation of their fundamental rights under Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution of India..On October 10, 2022, NLU Tripura had invited online applications for its first batch on the basis of Common Law Admission Test (CLAT 2022) scores. The last date for applying to undergraduate and postgraduates course at the University via email was October 22.On October 12, President of India Droupadi Murmu laid the foundation stone for NLU Tripura. On October 29, the University released its first list of selected candidates, and later a list of waitlisted candidates for the BA.LL.B and LL.M programmes. On November 8, the University also released its schedule for the academic year 2022-23. This notification provided specified deadlines for submitting fees for the courses chosen by the candidates..The petitioners claimed that after they deposited the fees for the respective courses, on November 16, the Director of the State government's Higher Education Department issued a notification highlighting the issue of state domicile quota in the admission process.Subsequently, the University cancelled the entire admission process for the upcoming academic session without any application of mind, after all academic formalities including payment of fees was done, the plea stated..Advocate-on-Record Yadav Narender Singh as well as Advocates Rakesh Kumar Singh, Awadhesh Kumar Dubey, Somesh Kumar Dubey and Vijay Kumar Sharma appeared for the petitioners..[Read Order]