Mumbai, The Bombay High Court has pulled up a law student for making “reckless and irresponsible” statements while challenging a university’s decision to bar her from appearing for final exams due to poor attendance, observing that justice does not mean “whatever I want and howsoever I put it”.
The Aurangabad bench of Justices Vibha Kankanwadi and Ajit Kadethankar dismissed the 23-year-old’s plea, noting that her attempts to overcome her own faults through false claims constituted an “abuse of process” that could jeopardise her career in the legal profession.
The court, in its judgment dated June 18, noted that any cause taken up before the courts of law must be bona fide.
“Every proceeding before a court is to seek justice; but the concept of ‘justice’ doesn’t mean ‘whatever I want and howsoever I put it’,” the court said.
The petitioner, a postgraduate student at the Maharashtra National Law University in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, had challenged the institution’s decision to bar her from appearing for her final semester examinations for failing to meet the mandatory 75 per cent attendance requirement.
After a single bench dismissed her initial plea in April, she filed a review petition seeking a direction for the University to conduct a special examination.
The student, in her plea, claimed there was an error in her attendance computation and alleged that the college had granted extra attendance to certain students arbitrarily.
She further claimed that the University had not considered her genuine medical circumstances.
The University opposed the plea, contending that the petitioner had recorded only 45 per cent attendance, and had it been at least 67 per cent, additional attendance would have been granted after due consideration.
It also claimed that the petitioner failed to attend the hearing held by the Grievance Redressal Committee before whom she had filed an application before approaching the court, and instead challenged the committee’s order refusing her relief, claiming it was arbitrary.
The court refused to accept the petitioner’s contention that the University had given concessions to some students, observing that it was hearsay and there was no evidence to support the same.
It noted that the petitioner had made absolutely “reckless and irresponsible” contentions, raising a new story about her ill health in the review petition, but had not submitted any supporting documents.
It is clear that the petitioner did not attend the semester lectures as required for the mandatory attendance, the court said, adding she has failed to make out a case for review.
The bench, while pulling up the law graduate, said it was not only disappointed with her audacity but also worried.
It noted that the petitioner was at a tender age of learning about the practice and procedure of advocacy.
“At such a stage of professional career, if appearance before the Courts of Law is meant and taken up in any undisciplined scurrilous way and without clean hands, then we are seriously concerned about the professional career of the new entrants in this noble field. This is high time that we must deprecate such practice,” the court observed.
The bench stated that while it was seriously tempted to impose heavy costs on the petitioner, it refrained from doing so, considering she was a student.
