SC stays Andhra HC order on IIT admissions

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has stayed the proceedings related to admissions in Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in the Andhra Pradesh High Court, which had directed the premier institute not to fill four seats offered to students from the state, but were later denied on the ground of not being in the top 20 percentile.

A bench comprising justice KS Radhakrishnan and justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose issued notices on Friday and sought response within two weeks from those candidates on whose petition the high court had passed the order on July 8. The interim stay will be for a period of three months.

“Now that the stay has been granted we will follow the Supreme Court order,” Prof HC Gupta, organising chairperson of JEE (advanced) said.

The AP High Court had directed the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) authorities to reserve seats of four candidates as allotted earlier. In response to the writ petition filed by Anudeep Pendyala and three others, the High Court had said the denial of seats to the petitioners was in violation of Article 14 of Indian Constitution.

The appeal in the Supreme Court was filed by JEE (advanced) 2013, IIT Delhi, seeking stay of the interim order of the Andhra Pradesh high court. The counsels had contended that the terms and conditions of the JEE had been ignored and many deserving candidates would get adversely affected as a result of keeping four seats reserved for the respondent students.