Law Students Move Karnataka High Court Challenging KSLU Circular For Holding Exams

The petition is filed by Rithvik Balanagraj B. (3rd year law student at St. Joseph College of Law, Bangalore) and Arunkumara H.S. (2nd year law student at S.B.R.R. Mahajana Law College, Mysore). The petitioners have stated 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 library 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 was filed through advocates Arnav Bagalwadi, Shathabish Shivanna, Abhishek Janardhan and H.C. Prateek states that the circular issued by BCI and KSLU is inconsistent with UGC guideline of April 2019, UGC Revised Guidelines dated 6.07.2020 and the government of Karnataka order dated 10.07.2020, 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 which is likely to be listed for hearing in due course prays for directions to the 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. (50-50 scheme).