Mumbai, Dec 15 (PTI) The Bombay High Court today issuedan interim order directing the Mumbai University to ensurethat students appearing for undergraduate and postgraduateexaminations are provided with "supplements" or extra answersheets if they require it to complete their answers.
A bench of Justices BR Gavai and BP Colabawalla saidthat while the university had prohibited the students fromasking for extra sheets, or "supplements" as they are called,to avoid problems in its online assessment system, thestudents could not be penalised for its "erroneous" decision.
"We have come across several matters where studentsare suffering on account of erroneous decisions by theuniversity.
"Several petitions have been filed in court alleging thattheir supplementary answer sheets were lost by the university,and they had thus, lost out on marks. The university gave suchstudents marks based on the principle of averages only afterthe court intervened," the bench said.
"Hence, it appears that the university has now come upwith the novel idea that if there are no supplements therewon't be any question of supplements being lost," the benchsaid.
The bench was hearing a petition filed by a final yearlaw student from the city challenging a circular issued by theuniversity in October this year saying that students will notbe provided supplements or additional answer sheets duringexams.
The university had argued that all answer sheetbooklets issued by the university have separate bar codes, andsince the main answer sheet booklets and the supplementsbooklets had different barcodes, confusion occurred duringtheir online assessment.
It had also argued that in several cases, the mainbooklet and the supplements of one student were markedassuming they belonged to different students, and inother cases several supplementary sheets had also beenmisplaced.
Thus, the authorities had decided to direct thestudents to limit their answers to the 37-page long mainanswer booklet in all exams.
The bench, however, rejected the University's argumentthat the main answer booklet was enough for all students tocomplete their answers.
It said that it was "common knowledge" that thehandwriting of every student was different, and while somestudents might not even use up the entire main answer booklet,other students might need extra sheets.
"The idea is that students are provided with as manypages as required to complete their answers. Now whether youprovide them loose sheets or another booklet is up to you," itsaid.
"Effectively, we cannot allow the university's lastminute decisions to prejudice the rights of the students," itsaid.
It also rejected the university claim that there wasno scope for the HC to intervene in its decisions.
"While we'll deal with this (the above argument)during the final hearing, can't allow the university toprejudice students. The university's circular, a piece ofpaper, can't be considered as a piece of delegatedlegislation," it said.
The petitioner, Manasi Bhushan, who is a final yearstudent of Law, had approached the high court earlier lastweek arguing that the university's decision to prohibitstudents from using supplements was arbitrary and erroneous.
Her counsel, advocate Vishal Kanade had argued thatthe university must fix the problems in its online assessmentprocess instead of denying supplements to students.
He had also said that students, especially those whowere studying law, often needed to write longer, moresubjective answers and thus needed supplements. PTI AYA BNMRT.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.