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The Delhi High Court on Monday ruled that no law college or university can bar students from taking examinations due to a lack of minimum attendance, directing the Bar Council of India (BCI), which regulates legal education in the country, to re-evaluate the mandatory attendance norms for the 3-year and 5-year L.L.B. courses. The court passed the judgment while closing a suo motu petition, initiated by the Supreme Court and transferred to the High Court, in connection with the death of Sushant Rohilla, a third-year law student of Amity Law School, by suicide on August 10, 2016, after he was allegedly barred from sitting for the semester exams due to lack of requisite attendance. A bench of Justices Prathiba M. Singh and Amit Sharma stated that the BCI should incorporate modifications to the attendance norms to enable credit for participating in moot courts, seminars, model parliaments, debates, and attending court hearings. “If at the end of a semester, a student still does not qualify the prescribed attendance norms, the college/university cannot bar the student from taking the examination,” the court said. However, in the final result, the student’s grade may be reduced by a maximum of 5% in cases where marks are awarded and by 0.33% in cases where the Cumulative Grade Point Average system is used, the court noted. Holistic education “Legal education does not merely require rote-learning or one-sided teaching. It has various dimensions to it, such as knowledge of law, practical application of the law and implementation thereof. To obtain such holistic education, mere presence in classrooms is neither required nor can be sufficient,” the bench said. The HC said even if attendance may not have been the only factor leading to the unfortunate incident, and was just a contributing factor, the loss of the life of a young boy could not have come at the behest of such norms. “There are several other cases of suicide by students over the years which have been connected to mandatory attendance requirements, mental health crisis arising from the pressure to meet such attendance requirements and other related issues,” the court remarked. The court also directed that all educational institutions and universities must constitute grievance redressal committees in accordance with the University Grants Commission regulations, 2023. (Those in distress can contact Tele MANAS at 14416 to seek help)
