Justice Vikas Mahajan, Delhi High Court
Students Should Not Be Excluded From Counselling Due To Delay In Class XII Results: Delhi High Court
|Candidates who cleared JEE (Mains) 2025 were denied counselling by JAC due to delayed Class XII results from NIOS.
The Delhi High Court emphasized the urgent need for effective coordination between school examination boards and higher education admission bodies, including those conducting entrance tests and counselling, to ensure that students are not unfairly excluded from the admission process due to delays in the declaration of their Class XII results.
The ruling came in response to a group of petitions filed by candidates who had cleared JEE (Mains) 2025 and were otherwise eligible for counselling but were being denied participation because their Class XII results from National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) had not been released in time. The deadline for counselling registration had been June 2, but these students were unable to register due to the result delay.
The Court observed that students who have achieved high percentiles and ranks in entrance exams like JEE (Mains) should not be denied the opportunity to participate in the counselling process simply because their qualifying Class XII results have not been released in time by the respective educational boards.
A Bench of Justice Vikas Mahajan said, "It needs to be underlined that there has to be proper coordination between the counselling bodies and all the Boards at the national and state level, conducting class XII exams..An important aspect which cannot be overlooked is that students put hard labour for two to four years, or may be more, while preparing for JEE (Mains) and they should not get ousted from consideration in the counselling despite having attained good percentile and rank only on the ground that result of class XII has not been timely declared by the concerned education Board conducting such qualifying exam of class XII."
The Court issued this observation while directing the NIOS to expedite the declaration of Class XII results. The aim is to allow affected students to participate in the ongoing counselling process for admissions to Delhi government-run higher education institutions.
To that end, the Court ordered NIOS to release the results by June 17, 2025, thereby providing a two-day buffer period before counselling begins on June 19.
It also instructed the Joint Admission Council (JAC), the body responsible for conducting counselling for engineering and architecture courses in leading Delhi institutions—to accept registrations from eligible candidates, even if their board results are still pending due to no fault of their own.
The Court made it clear that students should not be penalized for delays attributable to the examination board. Accordingly, JAC was ordered to permit registration for such students and provide them an opportunity to participate in the counselling process once their results are declared.
The Court allowed these students a single-day window on June 19 to register for counselling and continue with the admission process.
The matter has been scheduled for the next hearing on July 7, 2025.
Cause Title: Akshita Sehrawat (Minor) Represented by Her Father Sh. Deepak Kumar & Ors. v. Delhi Technical University (DTU) & Ors.
Appearance:
Petitioners: Advocates Gaurav Deshraj, Naveen Kumar, Ankit Singh Sinsinwar, Ravi Kumar, Dhananjay Kumar, Neha Yadav, Samar K, Anmol Agarwal, P Sharma, Kushal Gupta, Abhishek Singh, Kavita Vinayak, Gaurav Vashisht
Respondents: Advocates Soumava Karmakar, Jyoti Bajaj, S Rajappa R Gowrishankar, G Dhivyasri, Pankhuri Shrivastava, Aditya Kumar, Avnish Ahlawat, NK Singh, Aliza Alam, Mohnish, Amitoj and Arjun Mitra