The Meghalaya High Court has upheld the appeal made by a student of a city college who had been earlier denied to sit for his examination for not fulfilling the attendance percentage fixed by the college.
In a verdict issued today, the division bench of Chief Justice Indra Prasanna Mukerji and Justice Wanlura Diengdoh stated that Bamang Nabam, a student of Shillong Law College, suffered from gall bladder ailment as a result of which he could not attend classes regularly in August 2024 and could not fulfill the requirement of 75 per cent attendance in each of the subject of his studies.
The High Court stated that Rule 12 of the Rules of Legal Education, 2008 made it mandatory for a law student to obtain 75 per cent attendance in classes in order to be eligible to sit for the fifth semester examination would not apply to Nabam in view of his health condition. The court also directed that his attendance should be treated as regular and that he be assessed in the fifth semester examination in the regular course.
“We reiterate that the above would only cover a situation where in normal circumstances a student is absent and his attendance falls below 70 per cent. But this rule certainly does not cover extraordinary circumstances like illness or bereavement in a student’s family, natural disaster, riot strife, political upheavals, other acts of God and so on which prevent a student or students from attending classes,” the court ruled.
The court also said that the administrators of the college are to consider each case on its own merit. “If they find that with the existing attendance the student has shown sufficient interest in and has adequate knowledge of the subjects in the semester and is otherwise diligent and of good conduct, he should be allowed to write the examination,” it added.
The court noted that record shows that had the student not been inflicted with gallbladder ailment, he would have maintained regular attendance and fulfilled the qualifying criteria.
