It was the last day of admissions and the young man from Haryana, already selected, was looking forward to beginning his MA Hindi course at a Delhi University college. Then the blow fell.
India’s largest university informed him — for the first time — that the Economically Weaker Sections certificate he had submitted in the first week of May, while applying for admission, had expired in March.
The student had obtained the certificate from the tehsildar in Ballabhgarh, Haryana, last December. He learnt to his shock on Friday that it was valid only for the financial year 2024-25, and he must renew it for 2025-26 if he wanted his DU seat.
Except, there was no time left: Admissions had closed for students of his category.
“I had been told by officials (in Haryana) that the EWS certificate was valid for one year, but I never realised that ‘one year’ meant a particular financial year,” the student, who asked not to be identified, told The Telegraph.
He said he had met the college principal four times on Friday and Saturday and sought a week’s time to get the certificate renewed, a process that involves checks and clearances from several officials.
“He didn’t agree. I doubt that I will get admission,” he said.
Teachers said Delhi University (DU) earlier gave admission seekers a 15-day grace period to submit their EWS or OBC certificates, lest their certificates had lapsed and
required renewal.
Since both the EWS and OBC (non-creamy-layer) certificates involve an economic criterion, they need to be renewed every year.
However, DU scrapped the grace period in 2022, causing many students selected for undergraduate and postgraduate courses since then to be eventually denied admission because of lapsed certificates.
Divyanshu Singh Yadav, an LLB student at the Campus Law Centre under DU, said students from rural areas were often unaware when to apply for the renewal of their OBC or EWS certificates.
“Therefore, the university used to grant provisional admission based on their academic record and allow them 15 days to submit the certificates,” Yadav said.
“But the university dropped this policy three years ago without giving any reason.”
The student from Haryana is trying to secure support from teachers and the students’ union and hoping it would help win him some leniency from varsity authorities.
A group of OBC teachers on Sunday wrote to the University Grants Commission to direct DU to bring back the 15-day grace period.
Anand Prakash, member of the DU teachers association’s executive and one of the signatories, said the National Commission for Backward Classes had in 2023 expressed displeasure at DU’s abolition of the grace period.
In 2022, the university scrapped the grace period while introducing a centralised admission system that required students to apply online with documents. This was after it adopted the CUET — the national-level entrance test — replacing the system of the individual colleges managing their own admission processes.
“This (scrapping of the grace period) is against social justice. We have been protesting against this policy but the university is not responding,” Prakash said.
Academic sources said several other universities too used to grant similar grace periods for the submission of EWS and OBC certificates, but had now abandoned the policy.