St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, on Monday approached the Delhi High Court challenging the order of a single judge to admit seven students on the basis of seats allotted by Delhi University. According to the information, this appeal will be heard on Tuesday i.e. today, before a bench of Acting Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela.

Let us tell you that on September 6, the single judge, while giving relief to the seven students, had said that the candidates were not at fault, but they had to face undue hardship due to the ongoing dispute between the institute and the university. The college has appealed against the order passed by a bench of Justice Swarn Kant Sharma on September 6, in which the judge, apart from directing Stephens to admit the students, had upheld the university’s policy of allocating additional seats in the initial round, which the college had disputed.

Justice Sharma had said that the Common Seat Allocation System (CSAS), which empowers the university to allot seats to students at an early stage to start the academic session on time, is binding on all colleges affiliated to the university. Taking note of the college’s conduct of preparing separate seat matrices and fixing separate cut-off marks for each programme, the court said the 13 BA programmes offered by Stephens should be treated as separate and distinct for the purpose of seat allocation and admissions. However, in its 54-page judgment, the court had refused to pronounce judgement on the validity of the “single girl child quota”.