Supreme Court refuses to allow pregnant girl to appear in law exams

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to allow a second-year law student of Delhi University (DU) to take her examination on Wednesday on grounds of lack of attendance owing to her pregnancy.

The student, who could not regularly attend classes due to an advanced stage of pregnancy, had sought its permission to appear in the exams scheduled on Wednesday afternoon.

A bench of Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and Navin Sinha observed that the court was “very uncomfortable” in passing an order at 1 PM on a candidate seeking to sit in the examination scheduled an hour later.

“There is no point passing an order which cannot be complied with. The time is very limited,” the bench said and dismissed the plea filed by Ankita Meena, after the counsel for DU said she cannot be allowed to appear in the examination today as it was difficult to make arrangements for her in such a short span of time.

“Discipline of academics has been lost completely. What is the point in having a cut-off date? All this will be lost if we entertain all this,” the bench also observed.

The bench referred to the fact that a single judge of the Delhi high court had already passed an order in the matter and a division bench of the high court was hearing the appeal filed by student, who fell short of the 70 per cent attendance criteria due to pregnancy, seeking permission  to appear in the ongoing fourth semester LLB examination.

The counsel for the student told the top court that she could not appear in three papers in the examinations but the apex court should allow her to sit in examination on Wednes-day. However, the bench granted liberty to the student to pursue her pending appeal before a division bench of the high court.

“What is disturbing us is that suppose we pass an order now, we not very comfortable with it that the Supreme Court passes an order at 1 pm allowing a candidate to sit in her examination at 2 pm,” the bench said while asking the student’s counsel as to why she had not applied for maternity leave earlier.

“We appreciate the point you have brought before the court. A single judge has passed an order based on the orders passed by the division bench which is binding on a single judge. In case of a special law and a general law, the distinction has to be kept in mind,” the bench said.