With school exams getting canceled for all grades, including the boards, petitions to cancel final year degree exams as well had bombarded the top court. However, putting an end to the pleas, the Supreme Court rejected them saying that the final year exams will have to be conducted anyhow this year with the states only having the authority to postpone it further from September 30th to a suitable date. This too, has been granted in light of the coronavirus pandemic.
The SC in its order of August 28thstated, “State cannot promote students without final year examinations.”
This leaves students with the order that they have to write their final exams this year while states can defer them for as long as the dates fall within this year. State governments cannot cancel the final year exams, the court asserted.
To let students breathe a sigh of relief and not mount the exams on their shoulders amid the pandemic, a number of petitions were filed in the court. One of these was called by one of the members of YuvaSena of Aditya Thackeray, a minister in Maharashtra. All the pleas mentioned the students and their woes, including the difficulties they will have to face if the exams are conducted. With the educational varsities too remaining closed, there were lessons that still weren’t taught to some while others dint have the textbooks that they would access from college libraries. Their debate points said that to arrive at a passing mark, instead of conducting final exams, the government and colleges can consider the already completed five semesters and the Cumulative Grade Point Average or CGPA. An average of this can form the result for the finals, they said.
However, the argument wasn’t fruitful as the Supreme Court said that the “internal assessments will not suffice.”
The petitions were filed after the University Grants Commission (UGC) had ruled out that all college exams would have to be held by September 30th as this is apparently to “protect the academic future of the students.” It had further said that degrees cannot be awarded in the absence of any final exams.
Following the petitions, the national education body in the hearing of the top court reiterated that the decision taken was “not a diktat”, although state governments can modify the dates of the exams but not give degrees to students without conducting the examinations.
The Supreme Court backed the UGC and gave a verdict in its favor in today’s hearing.
The bench formed by Justices Ashok Bhushan, R Subhash Reddy, and MR Shah gave the order through the new socially distant way of hearing petitions- video conference.
“If states feel they cannot conduct exams by September 20, they can approach UGC for relief,” said the judges.
Terming this decision as a move for the “benefit of the students”, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing UGC, told that this has been taken given the fact that varsities will have to commence their admission process for postgraduate course aspirants
After the decision taken by the state governments of Delhi and Maharashtra in August to cancel final year examinations, the central education body had raised questions as to on what grounds the same was made. It said that this “directly affects the standards of higher education and will be an encroachment on the legislative field of coordinating and determining the standards of higher education that is exclusively reserved for parliament under the constitution.”
