St Stephen's releases Christian quota selection list after DU charges

Amid a tussle between Delhi University and St Stephen's College over the selection of candidates for reserved seats, the college has uploaded on its official website the list of Christian students who have been offered admission.

The allocation for admission into any DU programme is made on the university's dedicated portal -- Common Seat Allotment System.

Colleges are required to submit the allocations verified and accepted by them to the university to be upload on the centralised portal.

On Monday, the DU released the list of allocations for Christian candidates in minority colleges, including Jesus and Mary College.

For allocations in St Stephen's, another minority institute under the DU, the university said it has identified certain "crucial and alarming aspects" in the list submitted by the college owing to which it could not proceed with the allocations.

The university also accused St Stephen's College of exceeding the sanctioned quota for Christian candidates in its revised seat allocation list, and leaving some seats in a few BA courses vacant despite candidates meeting the required criteria based on CUET scores.

There was no response from St Stephen's College Principal John Varghese or admissions in-charge Sanjay Kumar on the development.

Attempts to seek the college's version on the allegations on different occasions earlier did not elicit any response.

PTI also sought response from DU Dean, admissions, Haneet Gandhi and registrar Vikas Gupta. Calls and texts to them went unanswered.

The Delhi University and St Stephen's have been at loggerheads for long over autonomy of the college.

This year, the two sides levelled allegations against each other, after the college refused admission to 12 single-girl child students who had sought admission through DU's newly introduced quota for them.

The college has maintained the DU asked them to admit students beyond their seat capacity.

The Delhi high court on August 29 -- the day when classes for the new academic session began -- barred six students from attending classes till further order after providing them provisional admission in the college.

On August 23, a single-judge bench had granted relief to these students while noting that there was no fault of these students who had successfully cleared the CUET exam and other formalities and despite being meritorious, they were being kept under suspense regarding the fate of their admission.