HC slams UGC stand on cancellation of arrear exams in TN
Amid college students creating a ruckus by joining the virtual court hearing with a few constantly echoing on their mikes ‘cancel the exams’, the Madras High Court, along with warning the students, slammed the UGC for failing to come out with clear stand on the Tamil Nadu Government Order cancelling the arrear exams for all students barring those pursuing final year.
By : migrator
Update: 2020-10-30 02:32 GMT
Chennai
A division bench comprising Justice M Sathyanarayanan and Justice R Hemalatha, before whom the batch of pleas came up for hearing in this regard on Thursday, came down heavily on the UGC for failing to address the core issue in its counter as to whether it was in consonance with the GO or against it.
While the counter merely dwelt on citing the Supreme Court order which related to final-year students and extension of the exam date, the bench led by Justice Sathyanarayanan, on taking strong exception to it, warned of summoning the UGC secretary if it decided to fire its bullet from another man’s shoulder without addressing the GO, which is under challenge.
However, the UGC counsel, on profusely apologising for the fallacy in the counter, submitted that the UGC was totally against the cancellation of the arrear exams and that at any cost has to be held either online or offline.
Several impleading petitions seeking to hold the exams were also taken on board in the case, with the counsels pointing out that when NEET and other competitive exams were held in physical mode there could be nothing that could stop TN government from holding the exam and moreover universities were autonomous bodies.
It was also pointed out that the State cannot take recourse to disaster management rules to scrap the exam as the said rules could apply only for fixing the exam dates based on prevailing situation and not for cancelling the exams.
The bench sought the UGC to file its counter and posted the plea for further hearing to November 20 amid counsels seeking for an earlier date as many students were willing to take the arrear exam and can’t be kept in limbo for long.
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