Astha
A Single-Judge Bench of Justice Krishna Dixit of the Karnataka High Court said that if poverty is not a sin in our country, being “poor” in intelligence is not a sin too.
“…in a country like ours, if poverty is not a sin, being poor in intelligence too cannot be; denial of opportunity that was made available to others similarly circumstanced, would be discriminatory & arbitrary; it offends sense of justice and causes to the aggrieved a heart-burn,” said Justice Dixit.
The Bench said this while hearing a plea filed by a student, Akash Deep Singh, from National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore against the University’s decision to detain him in the third year due to his poor performance in the examination.
The Bench averred that the right of the student under AER 2009 cannot be overlooked, merely because the AER 2020 was in place.
It went a step ahead to read the notification issued by the Vice-Chancellor in July this year.
The notification read:
“Academic Year 2020-21 is a transition year from AER 2009 to AER 2020 and hence a few accommodations have been made for this year to ensure that students are:
not prejudiced by the retrospective application of new Regulations;
given the best opportunity to progress in their academic programme;
given a clear forward guidance on the future application of the Regulations.”
Earlier this month, the High Court had directed the University to conduct Special Repeat Exams to allow students with low scores to improve.