In Brief
The appellant sought admission to a law course at West Bengal National University under new domicile-based reservation introduced by an amendment that came into force on 21 May 2019. The admission process, however, had begun in January 2019 with 30% fewer seats reserved for West Bengal domiciled students. The University deferred implementing the new 30% domicile reservation to the next academic year. The Supreme Court upheld this decision, holding that amendments introducing new policies do not apply retrospectively to ongoing admission processes. Since candidates had already made choices based on the pre-existing reservation policy and applying the amendment mid-process would disrupt the entire selection, the University's deferral to 2020-2021 was fair and reasonable.
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