Delhi high court refuses relief to pregnant DU student barred from exams for low attendance

The Delhi high court on Monday refused to grant interim relief to a pregnant DU law student who was detained and barred from taking the examination due to short attendance.

A bench of Justice S Ravindra Bhat and Justice AK Chawla denied the interim relief, saying it needed to go into details of the matter first.

The bench issued the notice to Delhi University on the plea by Ankita Meena, a second-year law student who challenged a single-judge’s decision who had refused to grant relief to write the exam.

The plea filed through advocate Himanshu Dhuper and advocate Ashish Virmani was urgently mentioned before acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal.

Meena’s counsel highlighted that Rule 2(9)(d) of Ordinance VII of Chapter III of Delhi University Act says attendance will not be counted in case of a married woman student who is granted maternity leave. The court sought to know whether this is applicable for all streams such as medical colleges, BTech, law faculty falling under the jurisdiction under Delhi University, etc.

Appearing for the DU, its standing counsel JS Rupal contended the rule can be misused and can be used in all medical treatments.

To this, the court said, “Maternity is an exceptional case. You cannot take every medical treatment into these circumstances.”

The court also sought to know from the university about the monthly attendance of the petitioner between January 2018 and April 2018. It wanted to know at which stage of pregnancy the law student had attended the classes.

Dhuper, the counsel for the petitioner, said they would file a Special Leave Petition (SLP) in the Supreme Court on Tuesday challenging the division bench’s order to refuse interim relief.