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Thursday, Jun 23, 2011
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High Court admonishes private engineering college

Mohamed Imranullah S.

Students punished without following principles of natural justice
It issued transfer certificates to seven fourth year students

MADURAI: The Madras High Court Bench here has admonished a private engineering college for issuing transfer certificates to seven fourth year students on charges of indiscipline without even conducting a formal enquiry or providing an opportunity to explain their stand.

Allowing a couple of writ petitions filed by one of the seven students, Justice D. Hariparanthaman said that the order passed for issuing the transfer certificates was “highly arbitrary and no prudent educational institution” could issue such an order without following the basic principles of natural justice.

“This shows the very attitude of the college and the bent of mind exhibited by them,” the judge said and directed the Anna University, Chennai, to publish the petitioner's seventh and eighth semester examination results which were withheld as per interim directions passed by the court in 2008.

According to the petitioner, he joined a private engineering college in Tuticorin district in second year mechanical engineering course in 2006 after completing his diploma. In 2007, he along with other students participated in an agitation against alleged misbehaviour of a teaching staff.

Subsequently, in January 2008, the college issued transfer certificates to the seven students accusing them of not obtaining signatures in their record note books in time, not writing the series and model test, behaving rudely with the faculty members and instigating other students to boycott the classes.

However, on the basis of a request made by their parents, the Anna University directed the college to permit the students to continue their studies and write the sixth semester examinations. Thereafter, the students were once again prevented from attending classes during the seventh semester.

This time, the Students Federation of India took up the issue with Anna University which issued yet another directive to permit the students to attend the seventh semester classes. Thereafter, one student dropped out of the college which permitted five other students to pursue their studies except the petitioner.

Immediately, he filed one of the present writ petitions and the court passed an interim order in 2008 directing the college to permit the student to attend the classes. When he was not allowed to write the semester exams for want of attendance, he filed another writ petition and obtained an interim order to write the exams.

Then, the court had also ordered to withhold the results of the examinations until further orders. Taking up both the writ petitions for final disposal now, Mr. Justice Hariparanthaman wondered why the petitioner alone was treated differently when the other five students had been permitted to continue their studies.

“It is surprising to hear from the college that special classes were conducted for those students and thereby required attendance was given to them. It is not known as to why the same treatment was not given to the petitioner since he too had paid tuition fees like the other students,” the judge said.

He also pointed out that the petitioner lacked in attendance only because the college had prevented him from attending classes until he obtained interim orders from the court.

“Already, the petitioner has suffered a lot. The students who joined along with him have completed their course even in April 2009. Now, he has lost two years in his career for no fault of his,” the judge said and directed the university to declare the results of his seventh as well as eighth semester results which were also not declared due to interim orders of the court to withhold the seventh semester results.

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