Bombay HC directs NIC to check student’s payment status for IIT Bombay’s seat: Report

NEW DELHI: The Bombay High court on November 11 directed the National Informatics Centre to check whether a student tried to pay a fee for securing a seat in the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, the Times of India reported.

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A bench led by Justice Shahrukh Kathawalla came after a petition filed by a student named Prince Singh, aged 17 years, belonging to Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh who was not offered admission after his online payment was rejected due to an issue, the report said.

According to TOI, Singh passed the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) Advanced 2021 and secured an All-India rank of 25,894 and a scheduled caste (SC) rank of 864. During the JoSAA counselling 2021, he was allotted a seat at IIT Bombay for Civil Engineering stream.

The plea filed by Prince said that the last date to pay the fees was October 31. The bench directed NIC to look into the matter after it was told that the online admission process was outsourced to it, the report said.

“He must be an intelligent student. He should not suffer because of a technical issue,” Kathawalla was quoted as saying by TOI. The issue will be heard next Friday, the report said.

Meanwhile, IIT Bombay ’s two professors and four students have won 2.5 lakh US dollars XPrize grant for developing a technology to remove carbon dioxide from atmosphere, oceans etc.

A team of students -- Srinath Iyer (PhD student), Anwesha Banerjee (PhD student), Srushti Bhamare (BTech+MTech student) and Shubham Kumar (Junior Research fellow-Earth Science) is the only single institute from the country to have received this award.

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The grant has been given by the XPRIZE Foundation in partnership with the Elon Musk Foundation. The announcement was done on November 11 at the Sustainable Innovation Forum at COP-26 in Glasgow.