'Will Unsettle Everything' : Supreme Court Dismisses OBC Student's Plea To Change IIT-JEE Course After Mistakenly Clicking Wrong Option

The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a writ petition filed by an IIT JEE aspirant who secured AIR 1008 in OBC category seeking directions to Centre, Ministry of Education and Organising Chairman, JEE Advanced, Kharagpur to allocate him the seat for academic programme ie Electronics and Electrical Engineering, IIT Guwahati and rectify the unintentional mistake committed by him. 

A bench comprising Justice L Nageswara Rao and BR Gavai considered the matter.

The student at the time of filing his choices for Institute and Academic Programme before the Joint Seat Allocation Authority, 2021, had unfortunately, selected Electronics and Electrical Engineering, IIT Kharagpur in place of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, IIT Guwahati.

The petitioner had averred that the mistake was supposed to have been caused because the time for clicking to his choice was about to get over and the time for clicking one of his choices was at 5:00 PM and he clicked for his choice at 4:59 PM on October 25 pursuant to which the system was locked.

Reliance has been placed on the Top Court's judgement in Siddharth Batra v. The Director, IIT Bombay & Ors SLP (Civil) No 14358/2020 in which the Court had dealt with the matter where the student who was not selected due to wrong clicking.

Varinder Kumar Sharma, the advocate for the petitioner, placed reliance on the Siddharth Batra case to seek the intervention of the court to rectify the error. 

Justice Gavai observed that directions sought by the petitioners would "unsettle everything now." Justice Nageswara Rao too observed that the JOSAA Rules also don't permit an exchange of seats before dismissing the petition.

Case Title: Lakshya Verma v. Union of India and Another| WP (Civil) 1317/2021

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