Panjab University told to submit Rs 25,000 before reply

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 13

Just about two months after Panjab University was put on notice on a petition seeking the quashing of a circular on “illegally” scrapping entrance examination for admission to LLM course on the grounds of the Covid outbreak, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has directed the acceptance of the university’s reply subject to the deposition of Rs 25,000.

The direction by the Bench of Justice Jitendra Chauhan and Justice Vivek Puri came on a petition filed by Uday Partap Singh against the university and other respondents. The Bench observed that the court, on November 18, 2020, had directed the respondents to file a reply within three weeks. Further direction made it clear that a failure to do so within the stipulated period would entail costs of Rs25,000.

The Bench further said: “The counsel for the respondents stated that the PU Registrar was unavailable on account of Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, the reply could not be filed. The reply shall now be filed within a week. In case, the respondents deposit the costs, the court Registry is directed to accept the reply if it is done within a week from today.”

Appearing in person through videoconferencing, Uday Partap Singh contended that Covid-19 had been taken as a ground in the circular for scraping the entrance examination for LLM and other postgraduate courses, but other universities and institutes under the same situation were conducting entrance examination with the help of the National Testing Agency.