PU Syndicate to decide on SSP’s admission to LLB

Bhartesh Singh Thakur

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 17

After Chandigarh DGP Tajender Singh Luthra, will Panjab University (PU), Chandigarh, bend rules to allow admission of SSP (Traffic) Shashank Anand to the three-year LLB course? The Syndicate will take a decision on it on November 19.

Anand was posted at Chandigarh on July 31 this year. He has been pursuing the three-year LLB (evening) programme from the Department of Laws, Maharishi Dayanand University (MDU), Rohtak, Haryana, from 2015. At present, he is enrolled in the fifth semester at the MDU.

“It would not be possible for me to return to Rohtak to complete this programme. In addition to this, as per the Bar Council of India guidelines, the evening programme has been discontinued. Thus, this is the last opportunity for me to complete the LLB programme, of which I have already completed two out of three years,” he said in his application to the PU Vice-Chancellor.

The last date for the submission of the admission form was September 7. For the delay, Anand reasoned, “In this regard, it is submitted that the undersigned remained extremely occupied with the maintenance of law and order and the security of vital installations in Chandigarh in the wake of the Panchkula violence following the conviction of Sirsa Dera head Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in a rape case as well as the student body elections in your esteemed university.”

He had sent his admission form on September 19. Vice-Chancellor Arun Kumar Grover sent the case to the Department of Laws, which in its academic and administrative Commitee meeting, dated September 29, stated that condoning the delay was beyond their jurisdiction.

Also, in a joint meeting of the Board of Control and Academic Committee on October 24, it was decided that since the university was going to file a review petition in a migration case in the High Court, his admission be put on hold.

 Earlier, the court had cancelled seven migrations in reserved categories, stating that the overall merit had to be followed as there was no rule of reservation in migration. 

On September 8, the court had ordered, “The respondent university is directed to fill vacant seats in the fifth semester of the LLB three-year course by first exhausting the merit list prepared pursuant to applications invited for the 2016-17 session. In case, there are leftover seats, only then the merit list prepared pursuant to the applications invited in the 2017-18 session shall come into play.”