Can’t interfere in academic matters: Telangana HC
Justice B. Vijaysen Reddy clarified that courts cannot direct any university to add grace marks, as it is the prerogative of the varsity
Hyderabad: Justice B. Vijaysen Reddy of Telangana High Court clarified that courts cannot direct any university to add grace marks, as it is the prerogative of the varsity. He said that when it came to academic issues, courts do not interfere unless there were instances of gross illegalities.
The judge was dealing with a batch of petitions filed by the 2019 batch first year MBBS students of Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences. They had failed both in the regular and supplementary exams in the new pattern conducted early this year.
Their grievance was that the university had not included multiple choice questions (MCQ) but they had used them in exams conducted for the earlier batches.
The sought direction to the university to grant five grace marks to all those who had failed and to declare that digital evaluation mode of correction of answer sheets was illegal and arbitrary. However, the court refrained from passing any directions.
“If there is any deviation in setting question papers, the deviation is minor and cannot be said to have impacted the performance of students. It is not as if the students joined the course with the firm belief that there would be MCQs in the question papers”, Justice Reddy said.