The High Court of Jammu Kashmir and Ladakh has ordered Kashmir University to pay Rs 1 lakh in damages to a student for “illegality and arbitrariness” in evaluating his English paper during the B.A. 5th Semester Examination for the 2017-18 session.
The student’s plea revealed that after the results were declared, he was marked as failed in the General English Paper with 27 marks, below the 38 required to pass. Upon obtaining a xerox copy of his answer sheet, he discovered that one of the questions had not been evaluated.
The student then applied for re-evaluation and was awarded 40 marks. However, the University reduced these marks to 34 based on a rule, changing his status from passing to failing once again.
In response to the plea, the University acknowledged that the student secured 40 marks upon re-evaluation but argued that the reduction to 34 marks was in accordance with “Statute 10 of the University pertaining to the re-evaluation of answer scripts.”
Justice Javed Iqbal Wani noted that “a bare perusal of the Statute would manifestly tend to show that the same did not in any manner apply to the case of the petitioner, having regard to the issue pertaining to the paper in question.”
The court found that the University had applied the Statute arbitrarily and illegally, resulting in significant and unfair prejudice to the student, who was forced to reappear for the examination.