In the last week of November, a student and LLB Topper, Bhushan Walunj had filed a petition against the Mumbai University with the Bombay High Court alleging that he was refused admission even after scoring a remarkable 82 out of 100 in the LLM CET exam. Through the petition, Walunj had seeked admission into MU’s LLM course.
According to Walunj, the University denied him admission because he failed to turn in the certificate for non-creamy layer education at the state level. However, he says that he has already submitted the central level certificate.
Court's verdict
The court on December 19 announced its verdict on the petition stating that given the merit of the candidate and the possibility of vacancy of seats in the university, the matter can be decided upon by the Vice Chancellor of Mumbai University. “As to how to take the decision, whether it should be in favour of the Petitioner or not, or what is in the best interest of the University and the academic standards and career of the Petitioner, we leave it to the Vice Chancellor,” the court stated. Thus, leaving the fate of the student in the hands of the VC.
However, Walunj is not at total peace with the court’s verdict.
“The representative told the court that the third round was the final round but I don’t know if that’s the case for this year as well. Usually, the admissions goes on until four to five rounds,” he said. Walunj also said that the University had earlier told him that there are two more rounds left and so they will try to incorporate him in the list but are now denying the same in the court.
The Bombay High Court observed that even though Walunj submitted the documents, it was not State approved as specifically required by the University.
University's claim
On the other hand, the University in its claim stated that there are other candidates as well who have lost out on the seats because of non-submission of documents in the given time period. And since Walunj is one of them, they don’t see any reason to provide him with any special treatment.
Walunj contacted the VC today for further details and he was told that his case is being transferred to the law department.
Advocate Kushal Mor and Tanmay Karmarkar represented Walunj in the court pro-bono.
Mumbai University started LLM admission for the year 2023-25 on August 12 2023 and ended it on September 30 2023.
