Supreme Court
The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to grant any relaxation in attendance to the 27-year-old second-year pregnant LLB student of Delhi University who was barred from the ongoing semester exams because of low attendance, ANI has reported. Adding that she was not regular to college because of her pregnancy, the law student had approached the apex court against the Delhi High Court’s interim order that had dismissed her petition for relaxation. In her plea before the high court’s division bench, the woman had said the single judge order is “illegal” and “denies her the right to give her examination” as a result of her pregnancy.
The matter was mentioned today before a bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar and Navin Sinha. The woman’s advocates Ashish Virmani and Himanshu Dhuper told the apex court that the appellant (the woman) prima facie has a good case in her favour since she could not attend classes because of the health issues that she faced during pregnancy.
On Monday, the Delhi High Court bench of Justice S Ravindra Bhat and Justice A K Chawla refused to give any interim relief saying even though there may be a justification for her inability to attend classes of IVth semester of LLB course, the relief sought by her cannot be granted in the light of the provisions of Rules of Legal Education of the Bar Council of India (BCI) and earlier decisions of the high court.
The university, in its defence, had argued that LLB degree course was a professional course and mandated regular attendance of lectures. The counsel also argued that the court has consistently held that the students who do not attend the stipulated percentage of lectures, are not eligible for enrolment as members of the BCI and hence, the university was justified in detaining the petitioner in the IVth semester.
The woman who had enrolled for the law course in 2016 had failed to meet the 70 per cent attendance criteria as she missed almost two months of the semester due to her pregnancy and childbirth.