The Himachal Pradesh High Court has dismissed an appeal by eight law students from the Himachal Pradesh National Law University (HPNLU) who sought to proceed to their next semester despite being detained for failing to meet mandatory attendance requirements.
A division bench comprising Chief Justice Gurmeet Singh Sandhawalia and Justice Bipin Chander Negi upheld a June 30, 2026, decision by a single-judge bench. The court ruled that established legal and academic regulations regarding mandatory attendance cannot be set aside by judicial orders based on compassionate or equitable grounds.
Origin Of The Attendance Dispute
The legal conflict began on December 6, 2025, when HPNLU issued an order detaining the eight students during their seventh semester due to a shortage of attendance. As a result of the detention, the university barred the students from taking their end-semester examinations, which were scheduled to run from December 11 to December 26, 2025.
The students filed a lawsuit challenging the university’s decision. On December 12, 2025, the High Court issued an interim order allowing them to sit for the seventh-semester exams, though the court explicitly stated that the temporary permission did not create any vested rights or legal equities in their favor.
The court later allowed the students to provisionally attend eighth-semester classes starting March 20, 2026, under the same condition that the temporary measure would not grant them any permanent legal rights and would remain subject to the lawsuit’s final outcome.
On May 12, 2026, the High Court disposed of the main writ petition, directing HPNLU to review the students’ situation in line with its applicable regulations. However, following the university’s subsequent decision, the students filed a fresh plea seeking permission to provisionally attend ninth-semester classes and sit for their eighth-semester exams. A single-judge bench rejected this petition on June 30, 2026, prompting the students to file an appeal before the division bench.
Limits Of Judicial Discretion
In its ruling on Friday, the division bench found no errors in the single judge’s decision and dismissed the appeal along with all pending miscellaneous applications.
The bench emphasized that judicial discretion cannot override mandatory statutory requirements. Commenting on the plea for leniency, the court noted that administering justice in accordance with the law is an ancient legal principle and stated that it could not issue favorable orders driven purely by sympathy.
To support its position, the bench cited the Supreme Court of India’s precedent in Martin Burn Ltd. v. Corporation of Calcutta (1966). The court highlighted the Supreme Court’s finding that consequences arising from statutory provisions are not inherently unjust, and that courts do not possess the authority to disregard statutory rules simply because their application may seem harsh.
