The Bombay High Court has issued an interim order directing the Mumbai University to ensure that students appearing for undergraduate and postgraduate examinations are provided with “supplements” or extra answer sheets if they require it to complete their answers.
WHAT COURT RULED
A bench of Justices BR Gavai and BP Colabawalla said that the university had prohibited the students from asking for extra sheets, or “supplements” . University had called “extra sheets” hindrance to avoid problems in its online assessment system. But the court has ruled that the students could not be penalised for its “erroneous” decision.
The bench was hearing a petition filed by a final year law student from the city challenging a circular issued by the university in October this year saying that students will not be provided supplements or additional answer sheets during exams.
WHAT UNIVERSITY HAD ARGUED
The university had argued that all answer sheet booklets issued by the university have separate bar codes, and since the main answer sheet booklets and the supplements booklets had different barcodes, confusion occurred during their online assessment. It had also argued that in several cases, the main booklet and the supplements of one student were marked assuming they belonged to different students, and in other cases several supplementary sheets had also been misplaced. Thus, the authorities had decided to direct the students to limit their answers to the 37-page long main answer booklet in all exams.
COURT VS UNIVERSITY
The bench, however, rejected the University’s argument that the main answer booklet was enough for all students to complete their answers. “The idea is that students are provided with as many pages as required to complete their answers. Now whether you provide them loose sheets or another booklet is up to you,” it said.
