The Supreme Court on Friday refused to quash the UGC guidelines to hold the final year examinations for college and university students. A bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan, R Subhash Reddy and MR Shah ruled that exams must be held, and states cannot promote students without a final examination. However, states can approach the UGC for an extension on the September 30 deadline.
The University Grants Commission (UGC) had earlier told the top court that its July 6 directive, asking universities and colleges to conduct final year exams by September 30 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, is "not a diktat" but states cannot take decision to confer degrees without holding the examinations.
The UGC had said that the July 6 guidelines are based on recommendations of experts and have been made after due deliberation and it is wrong to claim that it will not be possible to conduct the final examinations in terms of the guidelines.
Apart from the counsels representing the students, the state governments of Maharashtra and Delhi also had counsels arguing on their behalf on the final day of the hearing, August 18.
Arguing for the 31 students who had filed the first petition against the UGC’s guidelines, advocate Alakh Alok Srivastava stated that the universities risk losing the UGC grants if they fail to comply with the guidelines issued by the Commission, according to section 14 of the UGC Act.
Advocate Arvind Datar had argued that while reputed institutes like the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have awarded degrees without the final exams, why other colleges are not provided the option of following suit. Representing the government of Maharashtra, Advocate Datar had also stated that the UGC cannot impose the same deadline for all the states in India since the COVID-19 situation is not the same across the country.
Senior Advocate KV Vishwanathan, appearing for the government of Delhi, had pointed out that if the UGC’s deadline was implemented, the worst hit would be the poor, the downtrodden and those who do not have access to technology.
Meanwhile, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta argued that there are Standard Operating Procedures for conducting exams amid the pandemic, which includes measures like thermal scanning, masks and physical distancing and submitted that the UGC’s order was in the interest of the students. The Ministry of Home Affairs had also submitted an affidavit, which said that colleges and universities are exempted from the Unlock 3 guidelines, thereby permitting them to open for the limited purposes of conducting these examinations. As per the Unlock 3 guidelines, all educational institutions across the country were ordered to remain closed till August 31.
In the previous hearing on August 14, senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi had highlighted the inequality and disparity among the students’ backgrounds and argued that the pandemic was an extraordinary situation. Advocate Shyam Divan questioned UGC’s logic of cancelling exams across the country in March-April when the cases were low and insisting on conducting exams currently when the cases are rapidly increasing.
The UGC, on July 6, ordered all the colleges and universities to complete examinations for students in final semesters by September 30. Many states had opposed this rule since COVID-19 caseload in the states are different and many colleges and university buildings are being used as COVID quarantine centres across the country.