Thu. Mar 28th, 2024
Orissa High CourtOrissa Post

Synopsis: The High Court called for a review of the NRI quota at NLUs by the Bar Council of India, the Consortium of National Law Universities, and all stakeholders.

The Orissa High Court noted that the quota for reserving seats for non-resident Indians at National Law Universities is unconstitutional.

This observation was made by the Division Bench of Justices S Panda and SK Panigrahi while rejecting a writ petition filed by Ishika Patnaik questioning NLU’s refusal to accept petitioner’s request for admission to the 5-year BBA, LL. B (Hons.) course for the academic year beginning in 2020 under the NRIS category.

The petitioner demanded a CLAT entrance exam administered by NLU. She decided to apply under the NRI quota category, but because of the COVID outbreak at the petitioner’s place of residence, she was unable to select the “NRI/NRIs Category” option and preferred the “General Category” option. To make adjustment, the petitioner logged in the website on 15.8.2020, but it took a long time for the portal to open and she failed to upload and validate the changes.

National Law University
Bar and Bench

Senior Counsel for the petitioner, B. Routray, argued that the petitioner had attempted to change its category from “General” to “NRI/NRIs” but was unable to do so because of a technical error on the CLAT website.

The CLAT exam was held and the applicant appeared for the examination. The counsel further added that the merit list was released and the name of the petitioner was not included in the merit list where the candidates with a lower rank than that of the petitioner were on the merit list as opposed to the NRI/NRIs category.

On behalf of the NLU, Advocate Prafulla Kumar Rath, confirmed that there are 21 seats in the FN/NRI/NRIs category. As per the reported merit list, 21 candidates have already been selected. Therefore, the petitioner’s seat can not be further considered as she has not applied under the “NRI/NRIs Category”.

The Court held that they are constrained to notice that the NRIs category is an affront to the meritorious candidates who worked day and night to secure seats in NLUs through CLAT before parting with this case. The candidates belonging to the NRI/NRIs Category, who scored low on the merit list, always get a seat in the NLUs, while the general candidates with better marks often lag behind the students of the NRIs and get disappointed. This is like an upper class reservation, and this questionable quota category is unconstitutional. Under this category, eligibility and selection are unrestricted, illegal and subjective.

The Court disposes off the writ petition in the light of the above observation that, because all the seats under the “NRI/NRIS category” have already been filled by the opp. Party No. 1 and there are no additional seats available, the Writ Petition is not inclined to be entertained.