Karnataka High Court Issues Notice To State On Plea Seeking Parity In Assessment Criteria For Evaluating Freshers & Repeaters II PUC Students

A division bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Hanchate Sanjeevkumar issued notice while hearing a petition filed by Karnataka EWS 1512 Residential Social Welfare Association. The results of all II PUC students are to be declared today.

Recently, while hearing another petition the state government had informed the court that it has decided that all repeater students including those private candidates who had failed in the last year's II PUC Examination will be promoted by awarding passing marks and grace marks.

The state has further decided that the regular students will be awarded marks taking 45% of their 10th standard marks and 45% of 1st year PU marks and will be given an additional 10% based on an assessment by the college. Whereas all repeater students will be granted just passing marks and 5% grace marks.

The petition states that the report submitted by the committee appointed by the state which has come out with this formula for passing 2nd PUC students without them appearing for examination is prepared without application of mind and it discriminates between fresh students and the repeaters/private students. The repeater students and those private students having their first year PUC marks also should be awarded marks based on their 10th standard and 1st year PU marks. In fact the repeater students have attended 2nd Year PU classes, in an offline mode and they have put in more effort than the regular candidates.

Advocate Siji Malayil appearing for the petitioner submitted that "The act of the 3rd respondent by awarding marks using different yardsticks to similarly placed students based on a so-called expert committee report without assigning any valid reason is a clear violation of Article 14 of the Constitution of India."

Further he submitted that "Since both classes of students have data regarding the 10th standard and 1st year PU examination, granting marks to regular students based on their 10th standard and 1st year PU marks and granting a 40% to the repeaters without any reason is violative of Article 14 of the Constitution of India."

The plea prays for directions on the respondents to treat the repeater students at par with the fresh students for awarding of marks and follow the same methodology adopted for freshers in the matter of awarding marks for repeaters in the 2nd year pre-University examination for the academic year 2020- 2021.

It also seeks to direct the respondent to grant at least 45 % marks which is the basic requirement for various courses instead of 40% marks so that majority of repeater students can avoid appearing in improvement examination which is a potential risk due to the pandemic.

The matter will be next heard on July 27.