Law Student Withdraws Plea In Karnataka HC Challenging University Decision Of University To Hold Examinations

The Karnataka High Court on Thursday allowed a 3rd year law student of the Karnataka State Law University to withdraw his petition challenging the decision of the University to hold intermediate semester examinations from October, 2020.

A division bench of Justice B V Nagarathna and Justice Ravi V Hosmani raised preliminary objection as regards to the maintainability of the petition filed by Purbayan Chakraborty. The bench said "You're a law student, don't you know what is the basis of the PIL, there has to be no personal benefit to the petitioner."

Following which the petitioner submitted that he may be allowed to withdraw the public interest litigation with the liberty to file a fresh writ petition. The court granted the same. The petition said that intermediate semester students ought to be promoted under a comprehensive formula prescribed by the UGC, where 50% weightage would be in internal evaluation and 50 % weightage would be in marks scored in the previous semester.

The decision is also contended to have a "disparate impact" on those students who could not take part in the online classes due to various reasons such as internet accessibility, affordability, remote locality etc., and will impose an extra burden/ disadvantage on such individuals who are already marginalized.

The plea states that their academic calendar has been severely "compromised" due to the lockdown and they shall require at least 2 to 3 months of time, after reopening of college, to compensate the loss for the online classes and access the library for study materials and prepare for the semester examination. However, if that is done, the plea avers, the next academic year will "collapse". The Petitioner had urged that the 50:50 comprehensive mechanism as recommended by UGC should be implemented.