Court relief for engg aspirant from Amravati

THE ASPIRANT APPROACHED THE NAGPUR BENCH OF THE HC STATING THE UNIVERSITY SHOULD AWARD HIM 37.5 MARKS

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court (HC) came to the rescue of a 21-year-old engineering student from Amravati, who was awarded only six marks out of the total 100 marks in the Digital Signal Processing subject, during his eighth semester exams. After the HC intervention, the student was given 37.5 marks.

The case highlighted the arbitrariness in awarding marks by university examiners. When Rushikesh Ambadkar, a student of PR Patil College of Engineering and Technology, was given the single digit mark, he applied for revaluation. The subject teacher in his institute revaluated his marks to 40.

Encouraged with the subject teacher’s evaluation, Ambadkar applied for revaluation at the Sant Gadge Baba Amravati University to which the institute is affiliated.

During revaluation, the moderator awarded him 49 marks, but since the difference in the marks originally awarded to the student by the teacher in his college and those awarded by the moderator at the university was substantial, the answer-sheet was given to another moderator, who brought the marks down to 26.

The university then awarded Ambadkar 16 marks – mean of 6 marks and 26 marks, in terms of the December 2015 direction of the vice-chancellor (VC), which states that in such cases, students must be given the mark which is the mean of the closer of two examiners. The university took into consideration the closer marks – 6 and 26. Ambadkar approached the Nagpur bench of the HC complaining about the wrong application of the 2015 direction.

He claimed that the university should have awarded him 37.5 marks in the subject – the mean of the marks awarded by the two moderators, 49 and 26, being the higher marks awarded to him, instead of 16 marks awarded by the university.

The division bench of Justice BP Dharmadhikari and Justice MG Giratkar accepted Ambadkar’s contention.

The bench struck down the direction and directed the university to award 37.5 marks to Ambadkar.