Veer Narmad South Gujarat University gives 'grace marks' after LLB exam paper mess

SURAT: Paresh Mali (name changed), a fresh law graduate, is in a quandary over the 25 marks he has obtained as "grace" from Veer Narmad South Gujarat University (VNSGU) after completing his LLB course. The problem arises from the fact that even with the grace marks, the revised marks are less than the marks Mali secured in his second attempt and leaves him ineligible for higher studies in a good college.
And he isn't alone. Results of around 1,200 students of LLB from seven colleges who had completed the course earlier this year were revised and are now in the same 'marky mess'.
The students will now have to reappear in admission test for higher studies and those who want to practice law will have to submit a fresh marksheet to revise their Sanad, licence for practice, from the Bar Council.
Mali had failed in one paper of Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) semester V of LLB online exam which was held in February 2022 and got 245 marks out of a total of 500. The exams were delayed due to the pandemic.
Mali then wrote an application to the university, seeking grace marks against his argument that a few questions in the CrPC subject paper were out of syllabus, while a few answers suggested as options in the MCQ format too were incorrect. VNSGU, however, did not accept his request for a grace mark. And so, Mali had to appear in the retest held a few days later and this time secured a total of 318 marks. Within a few weeks, VNSGU held the semester VI exams and Mali cleared this exam too, securing 64% marks in his LLB results.
Meanwhile, the varsity accepted that its question papers were erroneous and provided grace marks to the students for wrong questions and revised its previous law results. Mali’s marks for the first exam were revised to 270 while his re-test result was declared as null as he did not fail at all! But since his total marks are less than the marks he obtained in the retest, his percentage dropped to 63 from 64 resulting in him not getting admission in a desired college for LLM. “VNSGU’s law faculty teachers claim that there were no mistakes in paper setting. But following the repetitive applications, an inquiry committee was formed with two experts from outside the university and the committee confirmed that there were mistakes in the paper setting and hence, appropriate marks have been increased,” K N Chavda, vice-chancellor of VNSGU told TOI.
Incidentally, the varsity was forced to revise the entire LLB results due to the efforts of a student who was hoping for a top rank in LLB. Nirav Makwana not only collected his answer book through RTI but also gathered documents to claim that the students should get grace of 76 marks due to the mistakes in the semester V question papers. “My RTI application went up to the appeal level where I requested that the VNSGU should get the question paper verified through experts from outside the university. Ultimately, they did and agreed to give the grace marks,” said Makwana who got 388 marks earlier and after revision 402 but still believes that he should secure 450 marks.