HC judge recuses from St Xavier’s case on GCAS

Ahmedabad: Justice Niral Mehta of the Gujarat high court on Thursday recused himself from hearing St Xavier’s College’s petition challenging the state govt’s decision compelling it to join the Gujarat Common Admission Services (GCAS) system for intake of students in its undergraduate courses.

On Thursday morning, the college’s counsel sought early hearing, citing urgency in the case, but Justice Mehta said, “Not before this court.” With this, the wait for those students who aspire to take admission in the college’s UG courses got longer, as the case would be heard by a new bench to which the chief justice assigns the case. The college has stopped its admission process and declared that it would resume the process after the HC’s decision.

St Xavier’s is an autonomous college affiliated with Gujarat University. Admissions across all govt universities and several private universities in Gujarat are being conducted through the centralised GCAS platform. According to the regulations, all affiliated colleges of the public universities were required to admit students only through this system.

Earlier, autonomous colleges attempted to carry out independent admission processes, but the higher education department insisted on their inclusion in GCAS, leading most of them to comply.

However, St Xavier’s College refused to join GCAS by citing its autonomous status as well as minority institution status. It has contended that, being a minority institution, it has a right to devise its admission process as the rights crystallised by the Supreme Court in the TMA Pai Foundation case.