The Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court has dismissed a review petition filed by a 23-year-old postgraduate law student who was barred from her final examinations due to low attendance, admonishing her for making reckless and unsubstantiated allegations against her university.
Justices Vibha Kankanwadi and Ajit Kadethankar ruled in a June 18 judgment that the student’s attempt to use false claims to mask her own academic shortcomings constituted an abuse of the legal process. The court observed that the pursuit of justice must be genuine, adding that seeking relief does not mean obtaining whatever one wants regardless of how the case is presented.
Dispute Over Mandatory Attendance
The petitioner, a student at the Maharashtra National Law University in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, was disqualified from her final semester examinations for failing to meet the mandatory 75 percent attendance threshold.
University records indicated that she had attended only 45 percent of her classes. The institution clarified that additional attendance concessions are only evaluated and granted if a student achieves a minimum of 67 percent attendance.
Prior to her legal challenges, the student had filed an application with the university’s Grievance Redressal Committee but did not attend the scheduled hearing. When the committee denied her relief, she challenged the decision in court, labeling the denial arbitrary. A single bench of the High Court dismissed her initial petition in April, prompting her to file the subsequent review petition to request a special examination.
Unsubstantiated Claims and Missing Evidence
In her review plea, the student alleged that her attendance had been miscalculated and that the university had arbitrarily given extra attendance to other students. She also claimed the institution failed to account for her medical issues.
The division bench rejected these arguments, finding no evidence to support her claims of preferential treatment for other students, which it categorized as hearsay. Furthermore, the court noted that her medical claims were a new narrative introduced in the review petition without any supporting documentation.
Judges Express Concern For Legal Profession
The bench expressed deep disappointment and concern regarding the student’s conduct, noting that she is at a formative stage of her legal education. The judges warned that introducing undisciplined and dishonest practices early in a legal career raises serious concerns for the future of the profession.
While the court stated it was strongly tempted to penalize the petitioner with heavy financial costs, it decided against doing so because of her status as a student.
