Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Tuesday directed the University of Mumbai to file an affidavit, justifying its decision of not providing supplements to students during exams conducted by them, by Friday.
A division bench of Justice B.R. Gavai and B.P. Colabawalla was hearing a petition filed by Mansi Bhushan, a final year law student who was arguing that University’s decision to prohibit students from using supplements was arbitrary and erroneous. As per the plea, in October this year, the university had issued a circular saying that during examinations, all students must wrap up their answers in the main answer sheet booklet that consists of 37 pages.
According to the petitioner, she needs supplements to complete her paper during every exam and therefore might need in the next one too.
Advocate Vishal Kanade, her counsel, argued that the university’s decision was primarily based on the apprehension that supplements added to the problems faced by the new online assessment system. He argued that the university must fix the problems in its assessment process instead of denying supplements to students. He further said that students, especially those who were studying law, often needed to write longer, more subjective answers, and thus, needed supplements.
The university’s counsel Rui Rodrigues told HC that all the answer sheet booklets issued by the university have separate bar codes and it had caused confusion in several cases where the sheets were assumed to belong to different students during online assessment.
He also informed the court that same practice is being adopted in the Nagpur University and hasn’t been challeged yet.
The next exam for law students is scheduled for December 16.
