Dalit teen’s IIT dream hangs by a thread & Rs 17,500, family awaits relief from SC

“I had to sell a house that we owned to pay for my eldest child’s education… I don’t regret it at all,” says Rajendra, who dropped out of school after Class 9.

Written by Nirbhay Thakur

Muzaffarnagar, Dalit IIT candidate, IIT Kharagpur, Muzaffarnagar, National Institute of Technology, Hamirpur, Dalit teen’s IIT dream hangs by a thread, Indian express news, current affairsAtul Kumar (centre) with father Rajendra and mother Rajesh at their home in Titora village, Muzaffarnagar. Image: Amit Mehra

Almost every day at 3 pm, the lights go off at Titora village in western Uttar Pradesh, rendering the small room on the first floor of Rajendra Kumar’s house largely useless for the next five hours.

“This is the only space my children have to study. Since this room gets almost no sunlight, the lights need to be on constantly. I could have bought an inverter, but that costs nearly Rs 25,000 and I have to choose wisely. I have four children who are in college,” says the 45-year-old, sitting in the unplastered room that is crammed with three cots — two of these propped against the wall — and a few plastic chairs.

These are choices Rajendra, who works as a part-time tailor and a daily-wage labourer at a transformer factory in Meerut, earning Rs 11,000 a month, has had to constantly make. But each time, he knew exactly what to choose. “I had to sell a house that we owned to pay for my eldest child’s education… I don’t regret it at all,” says Rajendra, who dropped out of school after Class 9.

While Mohit, 24, the eldest of Rajendra’s four children, is doing his BTech in computer science & engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Hamirpur, his second son, Rohit, 22, is studying chemical engineering from IIT Kharagpur. His third son Amit, 20, is a Hindi undergraduate student at Sri Kund Kund Jain Inter College in Khatoli, Muzaffarnagar.

So when his youngest son Atul, 18, was denied a seat at IIT Dhanbad after failing by a few minutes to meet the deadline to pay the fee that would have secured him his dream college, Rajendra decided he would give it his all — go right up to the Supreme Court. On September 30, the court is expected to hear Atul’s case to see “if something can be done for protecting the admission of the petitioner”.

At the far end of Titora village, past the sugarcane fields and the bigger homes of the Gujjar community, in one of the many houses with exposed bricks and blue Ambedkar flags fluttering on their rooftops, the family has been facing a nerve-wracking wait.

 “My son has worked hard for this. I hope he gets what he wants,” says Rajendra.

After his Class 12, Atul took a gap year before enrolling for JEE coaching classes at Kanpur at GAIL Utkarsh Super 100, a CSR initiative of the energy PSU that provides free residential coaching to meritorious students from economically weak backgrounds.

On June 9, the family, crowding around Atul’s brother Mohit’s laptop as they nervously checked the list of successful candidates, had broken into smiles and hugs when they spotted his name for IIT Dhanbad. Though there was still the online payment of Rs 17,500 to be made to secure the seat, that day, the family didn’t hold back on the celebrations – they distributed ladoos in the village.

“Rs 17,500 is a big amount for me, but I knew I had to arrange the money for my children’s education somehow,” says Rajendra.

He initially turned to a local moneylender. “He kept telling me I would get the money, but I shouldn’t have taken his word for it,” he says, adding that till the afternoon of June 24, the last date to make the payment, he was hopeful that the moneylender would keep his promise. “But he backed out at the last minute.”

Then began the scramble. Rajendra’s friend Titu “bhai” lent him Rs 10,000, another friend, Ompal, gave him another Rs 4,000. “I transferred Rs 3,500 into my account and we managed Rs 17,500,” he says.

Finally, as they sat down to make the online payment, 180 seconds before the deadline of 5 pm, the server of the portal stopped responding, says Atul. The fee could not be submitted. He had lost his seat.

“We panicked and called IIT Dhanbad… Even the coaching institute where I studied tried reaching out to the (IIT Dhanbad) authorities,” says Atul.

“That day, no one ate anything,” says Rajendra’s wife Rajesh, 40.

Over the next few months, the family knocked on several doors – the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and the Jharkhand Legal Services Authority, where they were advised then to go to the Madras High Court since IIT Madras was the JEE Advanced exam conducting authority for this year. After the High Court said that the relief sought by Atul was not under its jurisdiction, the family approached the Supreme Court.

The family is now pinning its hopes on a similar case that ended on a happy note in the Supreme Court. In 2021, a bench led by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud had allowed Prince Jaibir Singh, a Dalit student, to take admission in IIT Bombay despite a delay in paying the admission fee. Through a senior at his coaching centre, Atul managed to get the contact of Prince’s family, who, in turn, introduced them to Amol Chitale and Pragya Baghel, lawyers who had in 2021 argued and won the case for Prince in the Supreme Court.

On September 24, appearing for Atul, Chitale and Baghel pleaded before a bench of the CJI D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra that this was his second and final attempt at JEE Advanced and unless the top court cleared the decks for his admission, he would lose his IIT seat.

The bench had then said, “Bearing in mind the social background of the petitioner and the hardship which he has undergone, we are of the view that this is a fit and proper case for the issuance of notice to explore whether something can be done for protecting the admission of the petitioner.” It’s this that the family is hanging on to.

Atul is optimistic too. “I used to be nervous earlier, but now I have got used to this. We have been going to the courts for a month now,” he says.

Courtesy : The Indian Express

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