VIJAYAWADA: The Andhra Pradesh High Court has upheld the mandatory minimum attendance rule for B.Tech students, ruling that eligibility to appear for semester examinations is contingent upon fulfilling the prescribed attendance criteria.
A division bench comprising Justice Dhiraj Singh Thakur and Justice Cheemalapati Ravi delivered the verdict while hearing an appeal filed by GMR Institute of Technology (GMRIT), Srikakulam, challenging a single-judge bench’s earlier order.
The court affirmed that the attendance regulations framed by Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU) and GMRIT are valid and enforceable.
It struck down the earlier ruling which had deemed the attendance norm arbitrary and had allowed a student, Kaushik, to write his third-semester examinations despite failing to meet the 65 per cent attendance threshold due to illness.
The division bench observed that although Kaushik had subsequently progressed to the fourth and fifth semesters, it would be impractical to direct him to return to the third semester solely due to a technical deficiency in attendance.
Considering the unique circumstances, the court granted a one-time exception, permitting Kaushik to attend makeup classes to bridge the attendance gap.
The court clarified that this relief is not to be treated as a precedent. It cautioned that students cannot cite this judgment in future petitions to seek exemption from the mandatory attendance rule. Kaushik, an engineering student at GMRIT, was initially barred from appearing in his third-semester exams due to poor attendance caused by illness.
He approached the High Court, which allowed him to sit for the exams. When the college withheld his results, he filed a second petition. The single-judge bench had ruled in his favour, terming the attendance rule unreasonable in his case—an order now overturned by the division bench.