Law Student Moves Bombay HC Against Mumbai University’s ‘No Additional Answer sheet Supplements' Rule, Notice Issued [Read Petition]

A final year law student, Manasi Bhushan has moved Bombay High Court against a circular issued by the Controller of Examinations, University of Mumbai which bars students, irrespective of their field of study, from getting additional answer sheet supplements.

This circular was issued on October 9, 2017 and it addresses all Principals, Deans and Heads of Departments of Colleges affiliated under Mumbai University stating that the assessment of all examinations conducted under the University will now be carried out through an online screen marking system (OSM).

The circular also states the following; “for the purpose of facilitating this online marking system, no supplements are to be provided to any student from any branch”. This part of the circular, the petition states, infringes upon the fundamental rights of students guaranteed under Articles 19 (1)(a) and 21 of the Constitution.

Although, in the challenge to the abovementioned OSM system is pending before Mumbai University, the bench of Justice BR Gavai and Justice Manish Pitale recently allowed the University to continue with the system for the winter semester exams.

The petition cites several newspaper reports to highlight the position of the University and reasoning behind restriction.

Apart from facilitating the OSM system, few officials have been quoted as saying that the move to prohibit a student from taking additional answer sheets would also save paper as the earlier practice of providing an additional 40-page answer sheet supplement was a ‘colossal waste of stationary’.

The petition states that the actual reason for this new rule was that the University wanted to avoid the task of correction of additional answer along with the main answer sheet as several students complained that only one of the two was corrected.

However, the fact that 36,000 students availed use of supplements in the university exams held this April-May could not be ignored by the University.

The petition states-

“The Impugned Circular is patently erroneous inasmuch as it seeks to restrict the freedom of the students from appropriately articulating and expressing themselves and their knowledge and views on various subjects, by restraining them from taking supplements during the examinations scheduled to be held in December 2017 thereby violating the freedom guaranteed under Article 19(l)(a) of the Constitution of lndia.

The Impugned Circular is arbitrary and unreasonable as it seeks to impinge on the rights of the Petitioner to express their victims in more than one supplement so as to avoid alleged logistical inconvenience to Respondent No. 1 while correcting the marksheets of the students including the Petitioner by the online marking system devised by the respondents for this purpose.”

Notice Issued

Advocate Vishal Kanade instructed by Vashi and Vashi, appeared for the petitioner in the matter before a bench of Justice BR Gavai and Justice BP Colabawalla on Monday.

He submitted that his client had written letters to the University but had received no response for the same.

Court has now issued notice to the University seeking a reply on the averments in the petition. The next date of hearing is on December 14.