The Punjab and Haryana High Court has quashed the result of a law student from Panjab University (PU), Chandigarh, who was wrongly declared ‘fail’ in a 6th semester paper in 2023. The court directed the university to issue the student’s Detailed Marks Certificate (DMC) based on his actual marks and imposed a Rs 1 lakh cost on PU for its “wrongful action.” The court observed that the university’s arbitrary actions had adversely affected the student’s career and awarded compensation. It also directed the Vice Chancellor to investigate the matter, hold the responsible officials accountable, and recover the costs from them if necessary. The petitioner, a B.A. LL.B. student at the University Institute of Legal Studies (UILS), had joined the five-year integrated course in 2016, which was scheduled to conclude in 2021. The student failed the ‘Land Law and Rent Laws’ subject during the May 2019 exam and reappeared for it in May 2023. Despite securing passing marks, the university scaled down his score and declared him ‘fail.’ The petitioner’s counsel argued that the student was governed by the 2016 rules, which required a minimum of 45 percent marks in each paper, combining internal assessment and theory. Having scored 54 out of 80 marks in the theory exam, the student met the passing criteria, but the university erroneously applied an outdated regulation to reduce his marks. PU’s counsel claimed the student should have been governed by the older rules as he took admission in 2016, before a 2022 amendment. However, the High Court rejected this reasoning, terming the university’s actions “perverse” and unsupported by law. Justice Jasgurpreet Singh Puri held that the university had acted arbitrarily and without any legal basis for scaling down the petitioner’s marks. He further stated that such actions, which jeopardise a student’s career, cannot be justified. The court ordered PU to issue the corrected DMC reflecting the petitioner’s 54 marks and process his degree. The Vice Chancellor has been directed to take corrective measures within two months to prevent similar incidents from affecting students in the future.
