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Judgment
S.A. Bobde, J.—Rule. Rule returnable forthwith. Heard finally with the consent of learned Counsel for the parties.
The petitioners in all these writ petitions have approached this Court for a declaration that direction No. 9 of 2008 governing the provisional admission of a student subject to the result of reassessment is unconstitutional to the extent it does not permit grant of provisional admission to a student whose result of reassessment is pending in the subjects beyond or earlier than immediately preceding academic year or two preceding semesters as being discriminatory. According to the petitioner, it should make no difference if the subjects remaining uncleared and in respect of which reassessment is pending are of an academic year which is a year or more before the current academic year.
The petitioner is registered for Engineering in Computer Technology and was admitted in the academic year 2008-2009 in the First Year Degree Course. The result of the petitioner for the first year Engineering course was declared in 2009. He was declared unsuccessful in one subject. Thereafter the petitioner appeared for the third semester and 4th semester along with the subject not cleared. The 4th year semester examination was conducted in Summer 2010 and the result thereof was declared on 10.7.2010 while the result of third semester conducted in summer 2010 was declared on 23.7.2010. The petitioner joined the college and started prosecuting the fifth semester by joining the classes and practical, although the result of the first year examination was not declared. On 24.6.2010 her result for first year was declared and she was declared unsuccessful in one subject and therefore the respondent No. 3-college refused to admit the petitioner in terms of Clause 9 read with Clause 21 of Direction No. 9 of 2008. The petitioner therefore seeks a declaration that Direction No. 9 of 2008 and in particular Clause 15 thereof is unconstitutional. Clause 15 of Direction No. 9 of 2008 reads as follows:
The facility of provisional admission will be restricted to one preceding qualifying examination (yearly pattern course) and two preceding qualify semester examination (semester pattern course). In the event the candidate has additional backlog of earlier year or semesters then such a candidate would not be eligible for provisional admission in any event.
Thus applying Clause 15, the petitioner is not entitled to provisional admission in the 5th semester since she has not cleared one subject of the first year, the first year being earlier than the two preceding qualifying two semesters as contemplated by Clause 15. The effect of Clause 15 is that only a student who has backlog in the preceding two semesters is entitled to be considered for the provisional admission and if the student has backlog in any examination prior to two semesters, he cannot be so considered. Mr.Dastane, learned Counsel for the petitioner, submitted that the rule results in hostile discrimination since the rule discriminates between students who have a backlog in the preceding two semesters or the year before the year or semester in which he seeks provisional admission on the one hand and the students who have a backlog in semesters or year earlier than the two preceding years.
Having considered the matter we are of the view that though the said rule treats these two categories of students differently and only allows provisional admission to those who have a backlog of subjects in one preceding examination (yearly pattern course) and two preceding semesters (semester pattern course), the discrimination cannot be said to be arbitrary or whimsical. It appears to be a policy of the University that if the student has a backlog of earlier than two semesters he should not be permitted to be given provisional admission for the next year because a student ought not advance further even though he has not cleared a subject from a year earlier than one preceding qualifying examination or two semesters. There is nothing wrong if a student who has a backlog of subjects of a period earlier than one year is not given the advantage of provisional admission and such subjects are not allowed to accumulate. From one point of view a student who has uncleared subjects from earlier than the preceding years does have lesser academic excellence and in any case poorer performance than a student who has a backlog of any one preceding year. This is a matter of academic policy in which the Court will not interfere.
Mr. Kulkarni, learned Counsel for the respondent/University referred to Clause 10 of Ordinance No. 6 of 2010 (Annexure R-2) which reads as follows:
For provisional admission the eligibility in semester pattern courses will be thus maximum total number of heads of failure prescribed in the governing Ordinance for the purposes of benefit of A.T.K.T. plus maximum two heads of failure in each semester provided the candidate has applied for reassessment/revaluation in two heads in each semester.
Mr. Kulkarni submitted that the A.T.K.T. Rule permits students who have not cleared a certain number of subjects in two semesters to keep terms of the succeeding semester, as it is the policy of the University not to allow the students who have backlog of more than two semesters. The A.T.K.T. Rules in relation to admission to 5th or 7th semester course reads as follows:
a) Fifth semester course
(i) the candidate ought to have cleared first year examination in all respects.
(ii) the candidate should have appeared and passed third semester and fourth semester examinations except in maximum four subjects of said two examinations taken together.
b) Seventh semester course
(i) the candidate ought to have cleared first year examination in all respects.
(ii) the candidate ought to have cleared third semester and fourth semester examination in all respects.
(iii) the candidate should have appeared and passed fifth semester and sixth semester examinations except in maximum four subjects of said two examinations taken together.
Nothing is pointed out on behalf of the petitioner to show that the Rule under challenge which is supplementary to this Rule of A.T.K.T. reproduced hereinabove is discriminatory in any way.
The A.T.K.T. rule has not been challenged. The provisional admission rule under challenge is in harmony with the A.T.K.T. Rule. The latter allows students to keep terms in the 5th and 7th semester only if he or she has cleared the first year examination in all respects. We do not see how provisional admission can be granted to a student to a year or semester for which he cannot keep term. The learned Counsel for the petitioner submitted that in principle if provisional admission can be granted to the students who have not cleared the requisite number of subjects for two semesters then there is no reason why provisional admission should not be granted to the students who have not cleared the requisite subject for more than two semesters since the reason for granting provisional admission pending reassessment is the same in both the cases. We are of the opinion that the reason for granting provisional admission pending reassessment may be the same in both the cases but both the cases are not the same, as pointed out earlier. In the result, we find no merit in the present writ petitions and all the writ petitions are dismissed. There shall be no order as to costs.