The Delhi High Court recently allowed writ petitions filed by Campus Law Centre (CLC) students whose exam results were withheld for attendance shortage.

The judgment relied on In re Sushant Rohilla and its observations on the Legal Education Rules, 2008 to disqualify lack of attendance as a reason to detain students.

Justice Jasmeet Singh held,

"Once lack of attendance is held not to constitute a valid ground for detention, all consequential benefits flowing therefrom shall necessarily follow. These shall include, but not be limited to, promotion to the next semester, declaration of results, permission to attend classes, and conferment of the LL.B. Degree, in accordance with law."

The students moved court contending that the detainee list was released three days prior to the commencement of examinations, without publishing monthly or aggregate attendance records.

The University prevented the students from appearing in the first exam, but consequently issued a notification that provisionally allowed detained students to appear in the remaining examinations, subject to a report of an enquiry committee.

With no enquiry committee constituted, no opportunity of hearing was granted to the detained students, whose results were eventually withheld.

Within a month of declaring the other results, Delhi University then issued an order cancelling the results of the detained students and subsequently directed students to re-take the examinations.

Justice Singh noted in the order that the petitioners had furnished undertakings to abide by an enquiry committee before the pronouncement of the judgment In re Sushant Rohilla.

"Much emphasis was sought to be placed by the respondents on the undertakings furnished by the petitioners, whereby they had agreed to abide by the decision of the Committee. It is, however, not in dispute that such undertakings were obtained prior to the pronouncement of the judgment of the Hon'ble Division Bench in Sushant Rohilla (supra). To the extent such undertakings operate contrary to the law subsequently declared by this Court, they cannot be permitted to prevail. It is a settled principle of law that an undertaking which is contrary to a statutory provision or runs counter to the law declared by a constitutional court is unenforceable and cannot be sustained."

The Court directed Delhi University to not detain any petitioners on the grounds of attendance.

"If there is any result given in sealed cover, the same shall be declared expeditiously and not later than 2 weeks from today," it ordered.

Senior Advocates Raman Kapur and Saurabh Kirpal, along with Advocates Shivek Rai Kapoor, Vansh Bajaj, Ayush Verma, Nishant Shrama, Vishal Jaswal, Abhay Kumar, Nirbhay Kumar, Aditya Soni, Arun Kumar Yadav, Anupam Mishra, Aman Ranjan, Pooja Singh, Jay Prakash Vidyarthi, Kunal Sharma, Mehaq Rao, Yash Punjabi, Puneet Rathore, Himanshu Sharma, Himanshu Maru, Akshay Kumar, Junaid Aamir, Ayush Tiwari, Abhijeet Vikram Singh, Kshitij Chhabra, Siddhant Soti, Rajnish Kumar, Umesh Kumar, Shantanu Sagar, Raghav Bhatia, FA Ayyubi, Akanksha Rai, Gurneet Kaur, Satvik, Sacchin Puri and Kirti Madan, Kamal Mohan Gupta, Mehraj Hakim Ali, Urvi Gupta, Amber Shehbaz Ansari and Kritika Verma appeared for the students.

Advocates Mohinder Rupal, Hardik Rupal, Aishwarya Malhotra and Tripta Sharma appeared for Delhi University.

Advocates Ved Prakash Sharma, Preet Pal Singh, Tanupreet Kaur and Medha Navami, appeared for the BCI.

[Read Judgment]