Bombay high court says UGC be made party to PIL on university exams
The Bombay High Court on Tuesday directed that the University Grants Commission (UGC) be made a party to a PIL challenging the Maharashtra government's decision to issue degrees without holding final year exams. Owing to coronavirus and lockdown, the government canceled final year examinations and decided to issue degrees on the basis of students' performance in earlier semesters.
Dhananjay Kulkarni, a retired teacher and former university senate member from Pune, has filed a public interest litigation against the decision.
The PIL challenged the June 19, 2020 government resolution (GR).
Under the Maharashtra Public Universities Act, 2016, the Chancellor has the jurisdiction and the statehas no power to take a decision about exams, MrKulkarni said.
The UGC, on April 29, directed all the universities toconduct exams, but after a student organisation wrote to thestate Minister of Higher and Technical Education, the exams inMaharashtra were postponed and later canceled, the PIL said.
As per the GR, there are 7,34,516 students enrolled infinal years of non-professional courses and 2,83,937 studentsin final years of professional courses in Maharashtra.
The students who have cleared all previous semestersand do not want to appear for the last semester exam shouldgive in writing that they do not want to appear for finalexams, the GR said.
Such students will be awarded final year scores basedon the average of marks of previous semesters, it said.
Students can take optional exam later (if they wish toimprove their score), the GR added.
Advocate Uday Warunjikar, petitioner's lawyer, arguedthat this dual assessment method had no logic and it can notbe adopted while granting degrees.
After hearing brief arguments, a division bench ofJustices A A Sayed and M S Karnik said the UGC should be madea respondent, and adjourned the hearing on July 17.