M SUNIL CHAKRAVARTHY Vs. PRINCIPAL SREEKALAHASTEESWARA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY SRKIKALAHASTI CHITTOOR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) a short point is involved in this writ appeal as to whether cancellation of the examination of the writ petitioners on the ground of short of attendance was legal or not.

(2.) the facts are not at dispute. All the writ petitioners are engineering students of different semesters and they fell short of attendance. Their names were displayed by the college as having been detained. Thereafter the students along with their parents went to the college and the college management forwarded their candidature to the university for examination. Once the university found that the candidates were not eligible, they cancelled their candidature. It was challenged before the learned single judge who has dismissed the writ petition. These candidates have put in attendance ranging from 27% to 35%, whereas the requirement under the relevant regulation was 75%. The college academic committee has the power to condone the shortage of attendance in case of those candidates who have attended 65% of classes and beyond this there is no power with anybody to condone the shortage. This is not disputed. The only question which remains is whether the shortage can be condoned by any authority, if there is no power under the Regulations and Rules. This question has already come up before various courts and has been decided. The learned counsel for the writ petitioners/appellants submits that the learned single judge was not right in holding that the judgment of the Supreme Court reported in Shri Krishnan v. The Kurukshetra, AIR 1976 SC 376, had no application in the matter. Before going to the other judgments, we would first deal with this judgment. It was altogether a different case in different circumstances. There were different grounds taken for cancellation of the candidature of the petitioner in that case. At one stage it was stated that the candidate was involved in offences under Sections 376, 366 and 363 of I.P.C. on the other occasion it was said that he had not obtained permission from superior officers as the course was being run for the persons in service. At one instance it was also said that the candidate had not attended the requisite number of lectures, but a certificate was issued by the principal certifying that he had attended the prescribed number of academic yeaRs. There was a dispute also with regard to the fact that whether he had attended the classes or not. It is also not clear from the judgment whether there was any stipulation that beyond a certain point of time, shortage of attendance could be condoned. Therefore the learned single judge was right in not relying on this judgment. However, on the other hand, we have judgments which are on all fours as far as the present case is concerned. We would not be multiplying the judgments, but we would only rely on a few judgments. In Ashok Kumar Thakur, Appellant v. University of Himachal Pradesh and others, AIR 1973 SC 221, the Supreme Court held in paras 4 and 5,

(3.) we may also refer to judgments reported in Principal, Patna College, Patna and others v. Kalyan Srinivas Raman, AIR 1966 SC 707, Akilesh Lumani and others v. Principal, Sir C.R.Reddy Autonomous College, Eluru, 2000 (4) ALD 630 (DB) and K.Pradeep v. Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad and others, 2002 (3) ALD 667 (DB). Regulation No.5 lays down: