The Bombay Hgh Court said that the varsity is insensitive towards students, asks it to file affidavit explaining delay.
The Bombay high court rapped Mumbai University (MU) as well its Unfair Means Inquiry Committee (UMIC) for being “insensitive towards its students” while dealing with a case of alleged theft involving answer sheets of engineering students last year.
The vacation bench of justices SJ Kathawala and PD Kode was hearing the plea of three engineering students whose results of the Electronics Computer Programming paper, held as part of their May 2011 examination, were withheld after MU termed theirs a “Reserved Copy Case” (RCC).
According to Chandrakanta Gongane, advocate for the university, the answer sheet of one of the petitioners was found on peon Ramsingh Girasingh, who was allegedly caught along with other answer sheets from inside the MU premises on June 22, 2011. While Girasingh was handed over to police, MU appointed a UMIC to look into the matter. However, this was done only in September 2011, a delay which deputy registrar (examination) Datta Gughe (also present in court), was not able to explain.
What shocked the court most was the fact that till date, the panel has not called the students to appear before them and explain the charges levelled against them. When MU justified the delay by saying the confiscated papers were still with the police, an irked bench said, “The students not only have the right to be heard by the inquiry panel — a right that they have been deprived of till date, but are also entitled to an expeditious decision by the MU, so that they can decide the future course of their career.”
While observing “complete insensitivity on part of MU as well as the UMIC to the problems of the petitioners”, the HC bench directed the varsity to file a detailed affidavit stating its reasons for referring the matter to the UMIC in September and why the said committee has not taken any steps in the matter. Also, it asked MU to explain why no steps were taken till April 2012 to get the certified copies of the answer sheets from the BKC police, which is probing the theft.
While the petitioners’ advocates, Amruta Patil and Virendra Neve, sought the quashing of MU’s verbal order of not allowing the three to appear for the examination this year, the bench directed the university to produce their results in a sealed cover.
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