S NAMASIVAYAM Vs. GOVT OF TAMIL NADU

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These writ petitions seek to challenge the instructions to candidates with regard to admission for three years B.L. degree regular and evening course for the academic year 1985-86 and to quash condition No.8. Why I say condition No.8 is that though the prayer in the writ petitions is wide enough, the argument concerns only with condition No.8. To appreciate the argument of the petitioners, I may straightway extract the said condition:

(2.) 1 have given my careful consideration to the above argument. I do not think that either of the grounds urged before me could be considered to be tenable. Condition No.8, which has already been extracted, clearly lays down that graduation is the basis for admission, in other words graduation is prescribed as eligibility for admission to the Law College. In so doing, if the persons like the petitioners when they passed, were given mark sheets with merely grades, certainly it is not possible for the Law College authorities to find out the actual marks gained by the petitioners in the examination, because supposing the grade is between 40 and 50, whether actually the petitioners obtained 41, 42 or 45, cannot be discerned from the mark list. However, if the pattern of the award of marks has been changed by the University itself and later on the University had chosen to enter in the mark sheets the actual marks obtained by each one of the graduates, certainly those marks will alone have to be taken into consideration. So long as all graduates of the petitioners" type are treated as equals they cannot have any complaint on the score that the persons who passed later have their actual marks in the mark list and, therefore, they will have an advantage. It is not the proper way to look at it at all. On the contrary, as far as grades are concerned, the ruling is the minimum to be taken into consideration and as far as the actual marks are concerned, they alone shall be considered for the purpose of reducing them to 300.

(3.) As regards the argument that the Arts graduates cannot favourably compare themselves with Science graduates, here again the grievance seems to be rather imaginary. It does not matter for the purpose of admission into the Law College whether one is a Graduate in Humanities or Science subjects. If the petitioners have not been fortunate enough to score high marks in the graduation course, they cannot blame the system for that. There is nothing wrong with the system because, as I said above, all graduates, irrespective of the subjects, are treated alike. Equality does not mean arithmetical exactitude. Therefore, there is no discrimination at all, much less any pronounced inequality so as to invoke the ratio of the judgment of the Supreme Court in State of Kerala v. T.P.Roshkana, (1979)1 S.C.C.572= (1979)2 S.C.R.974= A.I.R.1979 S.C.765. Consequently, I conclude that there are no merits in the writ petition . Hence this writ petition is dismissed.