Delhi High Court lashes out at Delhi University law faculty for illegally detaining students for lack of attendance

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court today came down heavily on Delhi University law teachers for "illegally" detaining around 500 students for lack of attendance and ordered holding of supplementary exams, saying it was a "failure" of the faculty.

Granting relief to the law students, Justice Rekha Palli said the shortfall of attendance was caused due to "failure of faculty of law to conduct minimum classes as prescribed under the Bar Council of India rules."

The court passed a slew of directions and directed the law faculty members to conduct, within eight weeks, at least 139 hours of extra classes/tutorials for those students who are desirous to attend the lectures to make up shortage of attendance.

The court said the shortfall of attendance was caused due to "failure of faculty of law to conduct minimum classes as prescribed under the Bar Council of India rules."

The court made the directions while disposing of 21 separate petitions filed by 53 students, challenging the memorandum issued by the law faculty on May 7 and May 8 and May 10, detaining several students of fourth and sixth semester from appearing in the exams for not having an aggregate attendance of 70 percent in the semesters, as required by the BCI Rules.

In its 46-page verdict, the court said there was a prima facie reason to believe that Delhi University Teachers Association strikes saw "large scale participation" of members from law faculty, due to which students have been "unfairly deprived" of an opportunity to meet the prescribed attendance criteria.

It also said there were "glaring discrepancies" in the attendance record and it was maintained in the "most archaic fashion" by the authorities.

As an interim relief, the high court has earlier ordered that the students, who have approached the court after being detained by the DU due to lack of attendance, be allowed to sit for their ongoing examinations subject to final outcome of the petitions.

In today's judgement, the court said that the faculty must allow those students, who were detained due to shortage of attendance and could not be granted the interim relief, to take their supplementary examinations for the semester concerned.

"However, it is made clear that a student's result in respect of the said supplementary examinations shall be declared only if he/she meets the attendance criteria prescribed under the BCI Rules after attending the extra classes/tutorials held by the Faculty of Law pursuant to the directions of this court hereinabove," it said.

The court observed that by failing to hold prescribed mandatory minimum number of class hours, the faculty "illegally infringed" the students' legitimate expectations to have an adequate opportunity to meet the attendance criteria.

The court said it is a settled legal position that Article 226 of the Constitution confers wide powers on this court to grant such consequential reliefs as may be necessary in the interests of justice to meet the peculiar circumstances of every case.

"I am of the view that in the facts of the present case, the failure to exercise this power will inevitably result in the grant of an incomplete relief with no real remedy being awarded to the petitioners (students), who have not only been illegally detained from giving their end-semester examinations but have also been deprived of their statutory right to attend a certain minimum number of class hours during the course of the concerned semester," the judge said.

The court also directed the BCI to exercise its statutory powers under the Advocates Act and the BCI Rules and taken immediate steps to ensure compliance of rules of legal education, by all its recognised centres of legal education.

One of the petitions filed by Adarsh Raj Singh, a sixth-semester student of Law Centre-I, through advocate Samarendra Kumar, had sought quashing of the May 7 memorandum by which he was detained in the VI semester on the grounds that he does not have an aggregate attendance of 70 per cent in the said semester.

He had challenged the manner in which his attendance had been calculated and submitted that even though it is in public knowledge that there was a strike for about 15 days in Law Centre-I in February 2018 and again for about five days in March 2018, the authorities have not granted any credit to the students for those days, when they could not attend classes despite their willingness.

In the pleas filed on behalf of the detained law students, it was claimed that DU Law Faculty's three centres -- Campus Law Centre, Law Centre 1 and Law Centre 2 -- have arbitrarily, illegally and without issuing any show-cause notice detained hundreds of them.

It was contended that the law faculty never conducted any classes in any of its law centres for five hours continuously as was required under the BCI rules of legal education.

The court quashed the detention lists issued by the law faculty regarding students who could not meet the prescribed attendance criteria due to the faculty of law's failure to hold the prescribed mandatory minimum number of class hours during the concerned semester.

It asked the authorities to provisionally declare the results of those students who were allowed to give their end-semester exams as an interim relief.

The results would be subject to their attending requisite number of extra classes.