IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT MADRAS DATED: 05.07.2010 CORAM: THE HONOURABLE MR.JUSTICE V.DHANAPALAN W.P.Nos.11614 of 2009 and 7939 of 2010 S.Basheer Mohid ... Petitioner in both W.Ps. vs. 1. The Registrar, Tamil Nadu Dr.Ambedkar Law University, Greenways Road, Chennai. 2. The Principal The Government Law College Trichy 23. ... Respondents in both W.Ps. Writ Petition No.11614/2009 is filed under Article 226 of the Constitution of India for the issuance of a writ of Mandamus to direct the respondents to allow/permit the petitioner to appear and sit for the examinations in the tenth semester and ninth semester of five year B.L. Course to be commenced on 02.07.2009, 08.07.2009, 14.07.2009 and 15.07.2009 respectively. Writ Petition No.7939/2010 is filed under Article 226 of the Constitution of India for the issuance of a writ of Mandamus to direct the respondents to publish the petitioner’s results for the ninth and tenth semester examinations of five year B.L. Course held on 20.06.2009 (FOB), 02.07.2009 (FOF), 08.07.2009 (FOG) and 14.07.2009 (FO2) and the result of Final year Moot Court Practical Exam (FO1) respectively. For petitioner in : Mr.S.Prabakaran both W.Ps. for M/s W.M.Abdul Majeed & A.M.Abdul Ajeez For respondents in both W.Ps. : Mr.V.M.G.Ramakannan, for R1 Mrs.Dakshayani Reddy, for R2 Government Advocate (Edn.) https://hcservices.ecourts.gov.in/hcservices/ C O M M O N O R D E R Heard Mr.S.Prabakaran, learned counsel appearing for the petitioner, Mr.V.M.G.Ramakannnan, learned counsel appearing for the first respondent University and Mrs.Dakshayini Reddy, learned Government Advocate appearing for the second respondent College. 2. The petitioner has sought for a direction to the respondents to publish his results in the ninth and tenth semester examinations of the 5th year B.L. Course held on 20.06.2009 (FOB), 02.07.2009(FOF), 08.07.2009(FOG) and 14.07.2009 (FO2) and the result of Final year Moot Court Practical Exam (FO1). 3. According to the petitioner, he has joined five year course in Bachelor of Law (B.L.) at Government Law College, Trichy in the year 2003. He has attended the tenth semester in the final year at the above said College and his Register Number is 503C0180. It is his case that the I year of the five year Law Course does not contain any semester and from the II year, each year contains two semesters. He has studied for all the semesters and had attended all the semester exams right from the 1st year and during 2009, he was studying in the last semester, namely, the 10th semester. He has also attended practicals in the tenth semester and paid necessary exam fees and he was waiting for the announcement of exam dates. However, he was shocked to see his name in the list of students of V year B.L., who were placed under “Re-do the Course” and the same was affixed on the Notice Board only on 13.06.2009. He tried to meet the second respondent to know the reasons for redoing the course and when he enquired with the office of the college about the same, he was told that he was having lack of attendance for the X semester and when he wanted to know his percentage of attendance, the Office refused to disclose the same. 3(i). The petitioner claims that the attendance list would be affixed every month usually on the college notice board, but for the past some years there was no such practice. The college authorities are not even affixing the list of percentage of attendance for each student prior to the commencement of examinations and they have affixed only the list of students who were placed to re-do the course, according to their whims and fancies and as such, he was not allowed to sit for the examinations. 3(ii). Having no other remedy, the petitioner filed a writ petition in W.P.No.11614/2009 before this Court seeking for a https://hcservices.ecourts.gov.in/hcservices/ mandamus directing the respondents to allow/permit him to appear and sit for the examinations in the ninth and tenth semesters of 5 year B.L. Course on 02.7.2009, 08.7.2009, 14.07.2009 and 15.07.2009, respectively and also prayed for an interim direction to allow him to sit for the exams. In the said writ petition, the 1st respondent has filed counter stating that the second respondent College had conducted courses overall for 74 days from January 2009 to June 2009 and out of that period, the petitioner has attended only for six days. He has further stated in the counter that due to the notorious clash among the students of Madras Law College during the end of November 2008, all the colleges including the second respondent college on most of the days except 2 or 3 days remained closed till the end of January 2009. Thereafter, from 01.02.2009 to 22.03.2009, all the colleges including the second respondent college remained closed because of the Sri Lankan Tamilians issue and during April 2009, the college worked for about 21 days excluding Saturdays and Sundays and during May 2009, it worked for about 16 days. As per his knowledge, the college had conducted classes for about 64 days during his X semester and out of that, the petitioner had attended 25 days for practical alone including Chamber Work, Court Visit, two viva- voce, Moot Court, etc. and he has also attended regular classes except few classes. 3(iii). After taking into consideration all the above aspects and the nature of the case, this Court by its order dated 01.7.2009 directed the respondents to permit the petitioner to sit for examinations of IX and X semesters, but results were not allowed to be published until further orders. According to the petitioner, taking this interim order as a personal challenge, the second respondent, with an ulterior motive immediately filed a Writ Appeal in W.A.No.894/2009 as against the interim order passed in the Writ Petition. The said Writ Appeal was heard at length on 02.07.2009 and it was dismissed by a Hon'ble Division Bench of this Court since there were several discrepancies in the attendance register produced by the respondents before the Division Bench as evident from the observation made in its order. 3(iv) The petitioner would state that there is no fault on his part except for his absence for a few classes, that too, because of the fear in the minds of all the students including him about the regular untoward incidents and happenings inside and outside the college campus during the X semester. He was scared to attend classes and even his parents were not ready to send him to classes because of the airing in the media about the clash among the Madras Law College students and moreover his classmates (Final Year Students) of about 16 were arrested by the police for ransacking the office of the Sri Lankan Airlines at Trichy, because of the Srilankan Tamilian issue and it was published in all the leading newspapers. https://hcservices.ecourts.gov.in/hcservices/ There was an atmosphere of fear that due to some statements obtained by the police, any one of the final year students would be arrested as being friends of those students. All those students arrested were in fact allowed to write/appear in the exams without any punishment and their results were also published. 3(v) He has stated that he was allowed to appear in all the exams scheduled for IX and X semesters. The respondents have not published the results as per the direction of this Court. The respondents have not even published the results of the 'Final Year Moot Court Practical exams' and IX semester 'Cr.P.C.' exam held on 20.06.2009 which are not at all restricted by the interim orders. He has appeared for the exams and could not be able to know the results because of the interim orders. Meanwhile, he has sought for transfer certificate from the second respondent and the same has been countersigned by the second respondent and sent to the office for necessary process. As of now, he has completed the course and waiting for the results to be published. As there is no other effective and alternative remedy, he prayed for the above direction. 3(vi) In the additional affidavit filed by the petitioner on 22.06.2010, he has stated that after the Pongal/seasonal holidays the College reopened on 19.01.2009. Immediately, the students went on agitation in connection with the Srilankans issue following the agitation by students of other colleges. More than 16 students, who were the petitioner's classmates were arrested for ransacking the Srilankan Airlines office in Trichy. As there was an atmosphere of fear in and around the college and as the petitioner did not have any back-up in the society, he was afraid of going to college. The agitations of students is the main reason for the authorities to close the colleges all over the State from February till 22.03.2009 and it was finally opened on 23.03.2009. In the months of April and May 2009, the petitioner has attended classes for about 26 days and moot-court and other practicals. During the rest of the days in April and May 2009, he had attended the classes. In fact, sports was conducted for two days in the month of May 2009 in respect of which, attendance has also been given for him and thereafter the schedule of examinations was announced on 16.05.2009 and the last date for payment of examination fees was 25.05.2009. The petitioner had gone to the college on 3rd and 4th June of 2009 to collect his hall-ticket for the examinations and he was informed by the staff at the office that the hall tickets may be collected any day before the commencement of the examinations. Thereafter, he went to the college on 13.06.2009 for collecting the Hall-ticket, but to his shock and surprise he found his name in the re-do list. Thereafter, he approached this Court by filing a writ petition. https://hcservices.ecourts.gov.in/hcservices/ 4. The first respondent has filed counter stating that it is found from the letter of the Principal, Government Law College, Trichy that the petitioner has earned only 6 days of attendance during the whole of the X semester. The month-wise attendance details forwarded by the Principal of the College are extracted hereunder: S.No. Month & Year No. of working days No. of days attended 1 January 2009 9 0 2 February 2009 - - 3 March 2009 6 2 4 April 2009 23 3 5 May 2009 24 1 6 June 2009 12 0 Total 74 6 As per Rules of the Bar Council of India in Part IV, under Section B, Rule 3 reads as follows: "The students shall be required to put in a minimum attendance of 75% lectures on each of the subjects as also at tutorials, moot courts and practical training course: Provided that in exceptional cases for reasons to be recorded and communicated to the Bar Council of India, the Dean of the Faculty of the Law and the Principal of Law Colleges may condone attendance short of those required by the Rule, if the student has attendance 66% of the lectures in the aggregate for the semester or examination as the case may be." As prescribed by the Bar Council of India Rules, the shortage of attendance upto 66% alone may be condoned. 4(i) In the counter, the 1st respondent, with regard to the averments made in paragraph 5 of the petitioner's affidavit, would submit that their University has no remarks to offer. But, on the letter produced by the Principal, G.L.C., Trichy, it is seen that the petitioner has attended only 6 days during the X Semester and he was asked to re-do the entire semester. But, he was permitted to write the other semester papers. The petitioner is in continuous practice of redoing the course. He was ordered to re-do the course during the VI Semester of the 5 Year Law Course and he was placed under condonation in his IV, V, VIII and IX Semesters also. Therefore, it is found that the petitioner is well known about the consequences of condonation and re-do. The U.G.Board of Studies Meeting held on 22.06.2004 resolved as follows:- https://hcservices.ecourts.gov.in/hcservices/ "It is resolved to recommend to the Syndicate that if a student fails to earn sufficient attendance in one semester, the student will not be eligible to take that semester examination and will not be allowed to continue in next semester and the student must redo the entire semester in which he/she lacked sufficient attendance and only on completion of that semester in which he/she has to redo, will be allowed to continue the next semester." The 53rd Special Meeting of the Syndicate held on 22.06.2004 resolved to approve the above-mentioned resolution. 4(ii) The 1st respondent would further state that out of the total number of 74 working days, the petitioner attended only 6 days. However, the petitioner was allowed to appear for the other semester arrear papers. Since the petitioner has not earned the minimum required attendance as prescribed by the Bar Council of India, he was ordered to re-do the entire 10th Semester and he was not allowed to write the X semester examinations and the petitioner is well known about the attendance regulations, since he was already ordered to re- do the entire 6th semester and he was already permitted to write the examinations under condonation during IV, V, VIII and IX semesters and he was also allowed to write the arrear papers in the IX semester on 20.06.2009. This University is strictly adhering to the attendance regulations prescribed by the Bar Council of India and the same is followed by the affiliated Law Colleges including the Government Law College, Trichy and therefore prayed for dismissal of the writ petition. 5. Similarly, the second respondent has filed counter stating that the petitioner was a student of Government Law College, Trichirappalli doing five year Law course (B.L.) He has earned only six days and therefore he was placed under "re-do". He was permitted to write all the arrears except the X semester. He has filed W.P.No.11614/2009 before this Court and he was permitted to write the X semester examination subject to the condition that the results of his examination shall not be published until further orders of this Court and the petitioner again filed W.P.No.7939/2010 to publish the results of IX and X semesters examinations of 5 year B.L. course and the prayer to publish the results of IX semester is not in dispute and the prayer in the W.P.No.7939/2010 to publish the results of the X semester is the subject matter pending in W.P.No.11614/2009. The X semester in the five year B.L. Course consists of University examination and internals, as follows: https://hcservices.ecourts.gov.in/hcservices/ 10th SEMESTER Written University Examination placed Re-do 1. Arbitration, Conciliation and Alternate Dispute Resolution Systems 2.Taxation Law 3.Practical-III Drafting, Pleading and Conveyancing 100 Marks 100 Marks 50 Marks Practical (Internal) No-Re-do 1.Practical-III Drafting, Pleading and Conveyancing 2. Practical-IV Moot Court – 30 Court visit - 25 Chamber work – 25 Viva-voce - 20 50 marks 100 marks 5(ii) According to the 2nd respondent, the petitioner was not placed under Re-do the practical III and IV, which is internal, because he performed the internals. The petitioner was placed under Re-do in the X semester university examination, because he earned only 6(six) days attendance. Therefore, there is no dispute in releasing the IX semester result and practical III and IV internals of X semester. The publication of results of the X semester university examination is the subject matter of W.P.No.11614/2009. S.No. Month Total Number of class working Total Number of practical days Total number of days 1 January 9 - 9 2 February - - - 3 March 6 - 6 4 April 15 8 23 5 May 16 8 24 6 June 12 - 12 Total 58 16 74 5(iii). The 2nd respondent would further submit that the petitioner earned only 6 days in college attendance, but he claimed 26 days in practicals relating to court work, chamber work, Moot court, etc. The petitioner has not acquired sufficient percentage of attendance. Therefore, he was placed under re-do the X semester examination and he ought to have joined the X semester in January 2010 and completed the same semester as per the schedule. According to the 2nd respondent, filing a writ petition is not an alternative remedy. The Tamil Nadu Dr.Ambedkar Law University Regulation https://hcservices.ecourts.gov.in/hcservices/ provides, "all candidates doing semester system must put in 75% of attendance. The minimum attendance for the course shall not be less than 66%". According to the University Regulation, for full eligibility, a student has to attend 56 days (75%) in a semester. If he attends 49 days (66%) in a semester, he will be placed under condonation. Even assuming that the claim of the petitioner is admitted, he has not acquired sufficient percentage of attendance as per University Regulations. Therefore, he prays for dismissal of the writ petition. 6. Mr.S.Prabakaran, learned counsel appearing for the petitioner would strenuously contend that the petitioner has marked 26 days of attendance besides 6 days of attendance as admitted by the respondents. This Court, by an interim order already permitted the petitioner to sit for the examinations, but refused to grant permission to publish the results, as it will affect the future of the students. He has pointed out that due to the calamity which took place inside the premises of Trichy Government Law College, Trichy, 16 students were arrested by the police. As there were no classes for quite a long time between 01.02.2009 and 22.03.2009, all the colleges including the 2nd respondent college remained closed because of the Srilankan Tamilians issue. Earlier, the college was closed for an incident which took place in Dr.Ambedkar Government Law College, Chennai. Learned counsel would further submit that in similar circumstances, the University passed a resolution and granted condonation of attendance for 30 days for Salem Law College and 15 days for Government Law Colleges. 7. On the other hand, learned counsel appearing for the first respondent University would contend that as per the Bar council of India Rules, the students shall be required to put in minimum attendance of 75% of lectures on each of the subjects and there is no power to relax or condone the same except on medical grounds. He has also submitted that the University regulations which prescribe 75% of attendance is the minimum requirement and therefore, the petitioner has been placed in the re-do list, as he has attended classes for six days which is less than what is required as per the Regulations and as per the Rules of Bar Council of India. 8. Similar contentions were made by the learned Government Advocate appearing for the 2nd respondent College by producing the attendance and also giving a tabular column and number of days of working as well as number of days attended by the petitioner. By pointing out the University Regulations, she submitted that all candidates doing B.L. semester exams must put in 75% of attendance. The minimum attendance for the course shall not be less than 66%. According to the University Regulations, for full eligibility, a student has to attend 56 days (75%) in a semester. If he attends 49 days (66%) in a semester, he will be placed under condonation. The petitioner is required to attend 49 days out of 74 working days and https://hcservices.ecourts.gov.in/hcservices/ there is no rule for condoning the number of days of attendance except on medical grounds. 9. I have heard the learned counsel on both sides and perused the records and the relevant materials and also the provisions of law. 10. It is seen that the petitioner was a student of the 2nd respondent Government Law college studying in five year B.L. Course. He joined the said College in the year 2003 and he completed the other semesters, though he had some arrears of papers and subsequently he wrote them and became successful in all the semesters upto the VIII semester. For IX and X semesters, he was not issued with Hall Ticket and therefore he approached this Court in W.P.No.11614/2009. This Court passed an interim order directing the respondent University to permit the petitioner to write IX and X semesters examinations and for a further direction that the results of the petitioner shall not be published. 11. It is submitted by the learned counsel for the 1st respondent that as far as the IX semester results are concerned, there is no dispute about it and they are prepared to release the results on disposal of this writ petition. The main grievance of the petitioner appears that he has been placed in the re-do list and even though he was allowed to write the examinations of X semester, the results are not published on the ground that he lacks attendance as per the regulations of the 1st respondent university-Tamil Nadu Dr.Ambedkar Law University. 12. After all these upheavals, the college was re-opened on 23.03.2009 and the petitioner claimed that he has attended the classes during the period from January 2009 to March 2009 and in the month of April 2009, the students were asked to go for court visit, chamber visit, moot court and two different viva-voce. That apart, moot court was conducted for four days. In all, totally, for 26 days the petitioner claimed that he attended the moot court and the other practicals in the month of April and May 2009. During the rest of the days in April and May 2009, he claimed that he has attended the classes. The schedule of examinations was announced on 16.05.2009. The examinations were to commence from 15.06.2009 and the last date for payment of examination fees was 25.05.2009. This Court, after taking into account all the above factors and the main issue in the Writ Petition with regard to the shortage of attendance for the petitioner in IX and X semesters, passed the following order. “5. In view of the submissions made by the learned counsels appearing for the parties concerned, this Court is of the view that the main issue could be decided at the stage of the final hearing of the writ petition. However, as an interim measure, the respondents are https://hcservices.ecourts.gov.in/hcservices/ directed to permit the petitioner to write the tenth and ninth semester examinations of the 5 year B.L.Course to be held, on 2.07.2009, 8.7.2009, 14.07.2009 and 15.07.2009. However, the results of the examinations shall not be published, until further orders. This interim order is passed subject to the result of the writ petition. It is made clear that this order shall not confer any additional rights, on the petitioner and he cannot make any further claims based on equity. This petition is ordered accordingly." 13. The above order has been taken up on appeal by the 2nd respondent and in W.A.Nos.893 and 894 of 2009, this Court,, while dismissing the Writ Appeals observed that "3. As a test case, we perused the attendance register produced before us. We are not inclined to point out certain discrepancies in the attendance register, as the writ petitions are still pending and they require detail consideration by the learned single Judge. For the purpose of disposal of the writ appeals, it is suffice to state that there are some serious disputes as to the actual number of working days and actual number of attendance put in by the candidates. In these circumstances, the learned Judge has rightly given the benefit in favour of the students to write the examinations. It is also to be pointed out that the learned Judge has also ensured that in the event the candidates failing in their writ petitions, they should not claim any right over the examinations taken. In fact, we should also mention that the learned Judge has directed the writ petitions themselves to be heard on 20.7.2009.” A prima facie case was made out by the candidates that in the event they are not allowed to sit for the examination, they cannot be compensated at a later point of time as they may have to lose one semester. On the other hand, if they are allowed