In a writ petition filed before the Delhi High Court against Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) to call for its records regarding the admission criteria for the Academic Session 2026-27 and to quash Section V of the JNU eProspectus for the said academic session to the extent that it was related to the award of ‘Deprivation Points’, a Single Judge Bench of Justice Jasmeet Singh stayed the finalisation of the admissions in JNU based on deprivation points till the next date of hearing.
The petitioner, an aspiring student, also prayed for a direction upon JNU to process, compile, and finalise all admissions, institutional merit lists, selection rankings, and counselling processes for the said academic session strictly and exclusively based on the raw scores, normalised marks, or percentiles achieved by the candidates in the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) administered by the National Testing Agency, without granting any deprivation points or other unauthorised regional weightage. Quashing and setting aside of merit lists, provisional or final admissions, or counselling outcomes by JNU pursuant to Section V of the e-Prospectus was also sought by the petitioner.
The Court noted that the petitioner was seeking admission to the postgraduate courses at Jawaharlal Nehru University for the said academic session and that Section V of the e-Prospectus implemented a mechanism of awarding up to 12 deprivation points wherein one point deprivation point is equal to 3 marks, to candidates purely based on geographical location of their prior schooling.
JNU submitted that awarding of deprivation points was based on a policy to ensure adequate number of students. Reliance was also placed on the First Schedule of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Act, 1966. JNU further mentioned that all offer letters of post graduate and undergraduate courses had already been given.
The Court found itself unable to agree with JNU’s arguments and stated that by deprivation points, JNU had altered the marks obtained by a student and reserved the right to grant up to 12 marks for admission. The Court opined that this altered the result by permitting JNU to add marks to the candidate’s CUET marks. It was stated that the reliance placed on any provision does not permit JNU to add marks to the score obtained by the candidate.
It was stated that if such practice is permitted, the sanctity of an entrance exam would be hampered and a university, through ordinances, would be able to alter the scores obtained by a candidate in a competitive exam. The Court said that this was antithesis to the whole concept of a competitive exam.
Thus, the Court passed an interim order and directed the admissions based on deprivation points to not be finalized and to take no further steps based on deprivation points concerning the admissions in JNU.
The matter will now be listed on 24-08-2026.
