A Delhi high court ruling has held that sitting for an exam by a student in the successive academic year as a result of illness or other similar circumstances in the first year will still be taken to be the “first attempt”, and that it cannot be grounds for denying any recognition due to the student.
Justice Indermeet Kaur noted that that the university could not deprive the student of the award for the highest score in the batch just because the student took the examination for two papers the next year.
Unable To Write Exams Due To Chicken Pox
Speaking on behalf of his client, advocate Amit George, informed the high court that the petitioner enrolled in the five-year course of BA LLB at Amity Law School in 2010, which is affiliated to Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University.
He could not appear for two out of the total five papers of his sixth semester examination, that were scheduled for May 2013 as he was suffering from chicken pox. The petitioner then appeared for the exams in 2014 and passed with the highest score/cumulative performance index (CPI) for his course that is 80.56.
However in February 2016, the petitioner discovered that he wasn’t being considered for the Gold Medal despite achieving the highest score in his course.
GO Citied For Exams Being Considered Second Attempt
Counsel George, pointed out that the petitioner had appeared for five examinations in 2014 for his eighth semester. Stating that it was “a telling experience and highly burdensome” George highlighted that the petitioner had given the pending papers of the Code of Civil Procedure and the Code of Criminal Procedure on the same day as the papers of the 8th Semester.
The university dismissed his plea stating that under the governing ordinance, any student who fails to appear in examinations the first time and appears for the said examinations on a subsequent date would qualify as a “second attempt” on his part.
Court Rules It As First Attempt
The court accepted the student’s counsel’s submission and noted the student’s “extra one year did not work to his advantage but in fact worked to his disadvantage”.
It found that as the petitioner had received the highest CPI he was “entitled to the award of the Gold Medal”.
The judgement relied on earlier rulings of various high courts and the Supreme Court to find that that the examinations taken by the petitioner in 2014 were to be regarded as his “first attempt”. The judge has directed the respondent university to confer the Gold Medal on him.
The court, has however, refused to change the status of the other student, also a respondent in the current writ petition, who was awarded the Gold Medal by the university after securing the second highest CPI in the 2013 exams.
