- (1.) The petitioners impugn the action of the respondent University in not granting admission to them to the Master of Lihrary Science Course commenced with effect from l6th Aug. 1983. The facts pleaded by them are as follows.
(2.) They passed the Bachelor of Library Science Course from this University, i.e., Punjab University, Chandigarh, respectively securing 66.87%, 66.70% and 63.75% marks. After giving the weightage of marks admissible to the students who had graduated from this University, their merit as per the admission of the University authorities, comes to 74.12%, 73.37% and 73.5% respectively. The University vide its advertisement dt. June 17, 1983, published in the Tribune (Annexure P. 1) invited applications for admission to seventeen seats in the above noted course, by July 6, 1983. It was mentioned in this advertisement that certain number of seats had been reserved in favour of various categories of candidates, the details of which are as follows:-- i) 20% for Scheduled Castes. ii) 5% for Scheduled Tribes. iii) 5% for Backward Classes. iv) 3% for physically handicapped. v) 5% for outstanding sportsmen and vi) Up to 5'%, for the sons/daughters/wives of Military Personnel who have been incapacitated or died during the war or incapacitated military personnel themselves. The petitioners admittedly filed their applications complete in all respects within the stipulated time for admission to the open merit seats. They were called and interviewed on Aug. 9, 1983. However, on that day to their utter dismay and disappointment they learnt that out of the total number of seventeen seats, fourteen had been reserved in one form or the other and only three seats were available to the open merit candidates. As per the admission of the respondent authorities, the petitioners were respectively placed at Nos. 8, 9 and 10 in the open merit category of candidates. The reason disclosed to the petitioners for the reduction of the open merit seats to three was that in addition to the reservation of seven seats in terms of the advertisement Annexure P. 1, seven more seats had been reserved or allocated to the staff of the university libraries and for working librarians from other universities. On that very day, that is, Aug. 9, 1983, the petitioners made a representation to the Dean of University Instructions (Vice Chancellor of the University being away to a foreign country) against this excessive and arbitrary reservation of seats to the detriment of the open merit candidates. In this representation they also highlighted the fact that in accordance with the University Grants Commission's directions, Master of Library Science was the minimum qualification for employment as a Librarian and the above noted reservation completely obliterated their chances of recruitment to those posts. No action, however, was taken on this representation. Again on Aug. 27, 1983, one of the petitioners represented to the Vice Chancellor, who by that time had returned from his foreign trip, that as in the past, the number of seats in the Master of Library Science Course should be raised to twenty-four and thereby seven more seats should be made available to the open merit candidates. Again no action was taken on this representation.
(3.) The admitted case further is that out of the seven seats meant for the staff of the University libraries, only five candidates joined and thus two more seats were put in the general pool. Since one of the candidates, Vinod Kumar, admitted on merit, failed to deposit the fee and to join the course, that seat was also made available to the general category candidate. Thus in all five candidates up to No. 6 of the open merit list have been admitted to the course.;