In an unprecedented incident, a direction by Assam Governor Ajai Singh to grant grace marks to 12 MBBS students of Gauhati Medical College to enable them to pass through was today literally turned down by Gauhati University. The university asked the Governor to reconsider his direction.Singh, in his capacity as the Chancellor, on Tuesday had directed the university to award grace marks to the 12 MBBS students, and even fixed February 15 as the deadline for the same. The Executive Council of the university, which could meet only today due to late receipt of the Governor’s order, stopped just short of saying no and politely asked him to review his decision.The 12 students, including 11 girls, had failed to qualify for the MBBS degree by a few marks, following which they approached the Chancellor and prayed for application of his discretionary powers to allot them grace marks. Nine of the students had failed in pediatrics while the others had failed to score the minimum pass marks in medicine. Interestingly, two students who did not get the Governor’s approval for the award of grace marks included Pallavi Baruah. She was one of the three students who had initially rquested the Governor to help them.Though the Vice-Chancellor refused to come on record, other senior university officials said on condition of anonymity that the implementation of the directive to award grace marks to students and that too to MBBS students would have set a bad precedence.
