In a relief to students, the Bombay High Court on Friday issued an interim order directing the Mumbai University to provide supplements or extra answer sheets to students appearing for undergraduate and postgraduate examinations. The court also stayed a circular issued by the varsity on October 9 that barred students from asking for supplements
A Division Bench of Justice B.R. Gavie and Justice B.P. Colabawala was hearing a plea filed by a final year law student, Manasi Bhushan, challenging the circular. The circular meant that students had to limit their answers in all exams to the 37-page main answer booklet.
The court directed the university to issue a new circular stating that circular barring supplements had been stayed. The court said the university had prohibited the students from asking for extra sheets as it wanted to avoid problems in its online assessment system. The court said that the students could not be penalised for the varsity’s “erroneous” decision.
The Bench said, “We have come across several matters where students are suffering on account of erroneous decisions by the university. Several petitions have been filed in court alleging that their supplementary answer sheets were lost by the university, and they had thus, lost out on marks. The university gave such students marks based on the principle of averages only after the court intervened.”
The Bench said it could not allow the university’s last-minute decisions to prejudice the rights of the students. The court said, “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.”
Advocate Rui Rodrigues, who represented the varsity, said that the University of Nagpur had also implemented a similar decision that required students to limit their answers to a specific number of sheets. Mr. Rodrigues also said that the B.Com exams had already begun and an order granting relief in the petition would unduly favour LLB students.
Mr. Rodrigues argued that since the main answer sheet and the supplements had different barcodes, confusion arose during online assessment. He said that in several cases the main booklet and the supplements of one student were marked assuming they belonged to different students, and in other cases supplementary sheets had been misplaced.
Varsity’s stand rejected
The Bench, however, rejected the University’s argument that the main answer booklet was enough for all students to complete their answers. The court said that it was “common knowledge” that the handwriting of every student was different, and while some students might not even use up the entire main answer booklet, other students might need extra sheets.
The Bench said, “The idea is that students are provided with as many pages as required to complete their answers. Now whether you provide them loose sheets or another booklet is up to you.” The Bench also rejected the university’s claim that there was no scope for the High Court to intervene in its decisions. The court said, “While we’ll deal with this during the final hearing. The university’s circular, a piece of paper, can’t be considered as a piece of delegated legislation.”
The petitioner, Ms. Bhushan, had approached the High Court earlier last week arguing that the university’s decision to prohibit students from using supplements was arbitrary and erroneous.
Her counsel, advocate Vishal Kanade, argued that the university must fix the problems in its online assessment process instead of denying supplements to students. He said students, especially those studying law, often needed to write longer, more subjective answers and needed supplements.
