Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Dec 30: Division Bench of State High Court comprising Chief Justice N Paul Vasanthakumar and Justice Tashi Rabstan has held that re-evaluation of answer sheets is purely the domain of the academicians and courts have no role to play.
These observations were made by the DB while dismissing appeal filed by one Pawan Kumar against the judgment of writ court and decision of the University of Jammu.
The case of the appellant before the writ court as well as before the Division Bench was that he is an employee of University of Jammu having Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Applications. He was granted admission to MCA course as an in-service candidate of Jammu University and appeared in examinations after studying all the six semesters held in the month of July 2010.
He was shown to have not passed in two subjects and accordingly he issued legal notice to respondents seeking re-evaluation of his answer scripts, which was turned down by the University by stating that as per Statute of University, re-evaluation of answer scripts of MCA course is not permissible.
The argument of Advocates CM Koul and Kapil Gupta, counsels appearing for Pawan Kumar, before the Division Bench, was that exclusion of re-evaluation of answer scripts of MCA course while permitting the re-evaluation of answer scripts of other courses is not based on intelligible differentia so as to sustain the prohibition of re-evaluation.
However, Advocate Wasim Sadiq Nargal, counsel for the University of Jammu, submitted that Statutes of the University have been framed after detailed deliberations by different academic bodies of the University and finally approved by the competent authority.
“MCA is a professional course and after the completion of this course, the candidates have to serve in a private sector in cut throat competition where the employee hardly gets any chance to re-evaluate their mistakes and it is precisely the reason that the course has deliberately and intentionally been excluded from the provisions for re-evaluation of answer sheets in the University Statutes in order to build efficient and responsible professionals”, Advocate Nargal further said. The counsel for University of Jammu also relied upon various judgments of the Supreme Court on the subject.
After hearing both the sides, the DB while quoting the Supreme Court judgments said, “the courts have no expertise to go into the issue as to whether the decision of University is justified or not”, adding “the Supreme Court has held that court should as far as possible avoid any decision or interpretation of a statutory provision, rule or bye-law which would bring about the result of rendering the system unworkable in practice”.
“The Supreme Court has also held that no direction should be issued in such cases because direction for re-evaluation of answer sheets would throw many problems and in the large public interest, such direction must be avoided”, the DB said, adding “the challenge made by the appellant to the University of Jammu decision has no substance”.
Accordingly, the DB dismissed the appeal with the mention that it has no merit.
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