December 17, 2017

Bench observed that it has come across several matters where students suffered on account of erroneous decisions by the University.

Providing relief to students who’re yet to appear for their undergraduate & postgraduate exams, on Friday the Bombay High Court passed ad-interim orders, directing University of Mumbai to provide extra answer sheets or supplements to the students.

The bench was hearing a petition filed by a law student from the city, challenging university’s circular on extra answersheets.

Petitioner, Manasi Bhushan, who’s a final year law student, had approached the HC in November against a circular issued on 9th October, which stated that students would no longer be allowed to take supplements or extra answer sheets in their exams.

The High Court said while the circular had been issued to avoid errors in online assessment system, the students couldn’t be penalized for errors made by the university.

The bench said “We’ve come across numerous matters where students suffered on account of erroneous decisions by the university, several petitions have been filed in Court, alleging that their supplementary answer sheets were lost by university leading to them losing out on marks. The University gave such students marks based on principle of Averages only after the Court intervened. It appears that the university has now come up with the ‘novel’ idea that if there are no supplements, there won’t be any question of supplements being lost.”

The High Court added that it was common knowledge that handwriting of every student is different & while some students might not even use up the entire main answer booklet other students might need extra sheets.

“The idea’s that students are provided with as many pages as required to complete their answers. Now whether you provide them lose sheets or another booklet is up to you. We can’t allow the university’s last minute decisions to prejudice the rights of Students,” the Court said.

The Court said it would look into the university’s claim that the HC doesn’t have scope to intervene in the university’s decision during the final hearing.

“We shall deal with this issue during the final hearing but we can’t allow the university to prejudice the students. The university’s circular can’t be considered as a piece of delegated legislation,” the bench said.