Madras High Court Directs TN Engg Admission Secretary To Pay ₹10 Lakhs Compensation To Student For Wrongfully Denying Her Admission

In view of the above, while condemning the second respondent for its outrageous and inexplicable conduct, I direct the second respondent to pay a compensation of Rs.10,00,000/- to the petitioner. The said compensation shall be paid within a period of four weeks from today, failing which the compensation amount will carry interest at 9% per annum from the date of the order of Hon'ble Mrs.Justice Pushpa Sathyanarayana, i.e., 30.06.2017 till date of payment.

The petition, filed in 2017 challenged a Clause in the Notification of Information and Instructions for B.Arch Degree Course-2017 making a pass in National Aptitude Test in Architecture (NATA) mandatory for admission to Bachelor of Architecture. Even though the challenge had become infructuous due to passage of time, the court opined that since the respondent had acted in utter disregard of the clarifications issued by the Council for Architecture and the positive directions issued by the court, it was necessary to ensure justice.

The Council for Architecture had initially made NATA mandatory for admission into the Bachelor of Architecture course. However, pursuant to orders of the Supreme Court staying the notice, they had issued a circular/clarification stating that a pass in NATA was not mandatory and qualification in any other specially designed aptitude test conducted by the Competent Authority of the Central or State Government (Including JEE Paper-II Aptitude Test in Architecture) would be eligible for admission to the course subject to the fulfilment of the other eligibility criteria

While so, the petitioner, who had appeared for the JEE II and had obtained 226 marks out of 390 was denied admission as the prospectus issued by the TN Engineering Admission mandated that the candidate should have cleared NATA.

The petitioner approached the High Court wherein by way of an interim relief, the court directed the respondent to consider the Application form which the petitioner could submit to the University in-person. The respondent however, rejected the application of the petitioner stating that she had not qualified NATA.

The Madras High Court found this action to be incorrect and enquired about the possibility of accommodating the petitioner to the course. To this, the Additional Advocate General, relying on the decisions of the Supreme Court submitted that admissions could not be made post the cut of date.

The court was not satisfied with this contention and directed the respondents to either give admission to the petitioner or award compensation if it was not possible to accommodate her at this stage. The court was not inclined to support the contention of the respondent that the Coordination Committee was not apprised of the fact that NATA was not mandatory.

The court noted that the clarification in this regard was issued by the Council for Architecture on 15^th July while the guidelines for admission was issued on 25^th July in breach of the guidelines issued by the Council.

It is therefore clear that the second respondent had not only violated the orders of this Court but had insisted upon an unwanted qualification to reject the petitioner's application.

With respect to compensation, the court relied on precedents by the Apex Court and High Courts to support that the petitioner, who was denied admission due to no fault of hers was eligible to be compensated by the respondent. In the present case, the court felt that the compensation should be more as the respondents had acted in ignorance willfully violating court orders thus denying admission to petitioner even though she had approached the court.

Case Title: Minor V Amrutha v. Council for Architecture and another

Case No: WP No 16762 of 2017

Citation: 2022 LiveLaw (Mad) 396

Counsel for the Petitioner: Mr. M.Vijayamehanath for AAV Partners

Counsel for the Respondents: Mr.A.Sheik K. Peer (R1), Mr.J.Ravindran Addl. Advocate General Asst. By Mr.D.Ravichander Spl. Govt. Pleader and Mrs. V.Yamunadevi Spl. Govt. Pleader (R2), Mr.Meenakshi Sundaram Standing Counsel for Anna University