UNIVERSITY OF CALCUTTA Vs. SAIMA GAZIANI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal against the interim order passed by the learned single Judge of this Court. Following facts will help us understand the controversy involved. The writ petitioner is a student. She was admitted to B.Com Honours course starting from session 2001 -2002. As per the curriculum she could appear for the Part-I examination of the B.Com Honours course after two years that is in the examination which was scheduled to be held in 2003. Accordingly she appeared in that examination. For B.Com Honours Part-I, a student has to pass in three groups of subjects. Out of these three groups the first two groups are compulsory subjects and the third group is the Honours subject. The student passed in the Group I of the pass group but failed in two papers namely Economics and Mathematics in group II. She, however, passed in the Honours group which was the third group. It was seen from the initial mark sheet that in group II she had failed. She had scored 17 marks in Economics and 28 marks in Mathematics. In keeping with the Rules of the University she applied for revaluation of those two papers. After the revaluation it was found that there was no change in the marks awarded in Economics, while in Mathematics, however, she was entitled to 5 more marks and thus a new mark sheet was provided to her wherein her newly scored marks were entered. However, that made no difference because she had failed in group II. However, she was held eligible for compartmental examination in Group II. As per the concerned Rule she could take up the classes of Part II of Honours examination only after passing in the compartmental examination. We shall come to these rules a little later. However, the student did not stop at that and filed a writ petition.

(2.) In her writ petition she, inter alia, prayed for the following reliefs :

(3.) Her contentions appeared to be that her answer papers were not properly evaluated. She reiterated in her writ petition that she was a brilliant student and had scored high percentage of marks varying from 79-81 in her Indian Certificate of Secondary Education Examination held in the year 1999. She relied on the xerox copies of mark sheets of that examination. She then reiterated that on the basis of her performance she expected better results but was given only 17 and 33 marks in Economics and Mathematics respectively. No specific allegation has been made by the petitioner in respect of any of the evaluator nor any fact has been highlighted to suggest that she was picked and chosea for unreasonable and harsh evaluation. It is also not the claim that her answer papers were not fully evaluated. In short, the claim of the petitioner was that her papers were not properly evaluated. On that basis she prayed for re-examination (probably meaning revaluation) of the answer scripts of Economics and Mathematics. We have deliberately referred to the writ petition as also the prayers because in our opinion prayer (b) of the writ petition makes no sense, while in prayer (c) the same prayer is reiterated. Vide prayer (e) again ad-interim relief is claimed for holding re-examination (probably revaluation) of the answer scripts. We have quoted the prayers because there was no challenge to the constitutionality or the validity of the concerned Rules of University of Calcutta in the whole writ petition.