Bar Council Directions For Semester Exam : Karnataka High Court Issues Notice On Law Student's Plea Challenging BCI, KSLU Circulars

A bench of Justice Krishna S Dixit issued the notice returnable on January 5, 2021 on the plea filed by Ritvik Balanagraj B,  3rd year law student at St. Joseph College of Law, Bengaluru.

Earlier, the student had moved a public interest litigation before the high which was dismissed by a division bench.

The court had then said :"The reliefs they are seeking in this writ petition are not in public interest, in as much as they are seeking relief in their personal interest or private interest. Therefore writ petition cannot be styled as PIL. On this short ground the petition is dismissed, reserving liberty to petitioners to file writ petitions seeking reliefs in personal or private interest, if so advised."

Following that, the student approached the single bench stating that -  "The examination will have a disproportionate and adverse impact on the students who were unable to attend classes in online mode for various reasons like accessibility, remote locality, and affordability. They would effectively be compelled to write examinations on subjects which they were never taught and that will have a disparate impact on these students and will impose an extra burden on such individuals who were already marginalized, and violate Article 14."

Further, it is said that because of the sudden shutdown of colleges, the students have lost access to libraries and have come back home without any study material in their hand. The students had a legitimate expectation from the university that they would be taught the subjects, given access to study material and then they would be evaluated. If an examination is conducted bypassing this process that would breach this legitimate expectation.

The petition filed through advocates Arnav Bagalwadi, Shathabish Shivanna, Abhishek Janardhan and H.C. Prateek states that the circular issued by BCI and KSLU are inconsistent with UGC guideline of April 2019, UGC Revised Guidelines dated 6.07.2020 and the government of Karnataka order dated 10.07.2020, which mandated all the universities in the state of Karnataka to evaluate its intermediate semester students under an evaluation formula, where 50% weightage would be in internal evaluation and 50 % weightage would be in marks scored in previous semester. The law students of KSLU are equally affected by the pandemic and they are also similarly circumstanced.

The petition prays for quashing the circular dated 09.11.2020 and Press Release dated 01.11.2020 as being illegal and void to the extent that they deviate from the guidelines issued by the Universities Grants Commission and impose an examination on Intermediate semester Law Students of all Law Universities across India, including the Law Universities that are affiliated with KSLU, for the semester of 2019-2020 academic year.

Further, the plea seeks a prayer to quash the Guidelines dated 27.05.2020 and Press Release dated 09.06.2020 issued by Respondent No.1(Bar Council of India) as being illegal and void and to direct Karnataka State Law University to give effect to the government of Karnataka order dated 10.07.2020 which is in line with the UGC Guidelines on Examinations and Academic Calendar for the Universities in view of Covid-19 Pandemic and Subsequent Lockdown.