ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) Wednesday dismissed a petition filed by the students of a private university against on-campus examinations.
A single bench of Justice Babar Sattar heard the petition filed by Advocate Qazi Ghulam Dastgir on the behalf of the students, Ali Bin Shafaat and Sharyar Abbasi.
They cited National University of Modern Languages (NUML) and the Higher Education Commission (HEC) as respondents.
During the hearing, the lawyer requested the court to order the university to hold online exams due to the second wave of coronavirus pandemic.
Justice Sattar asked from him why the petitioners did not approach the relevant forum the HEC to have their grievance redressed.
He added that the matter was related to the HEC and that the court could not do anything about it, and disposed of the petition.
In their petition, they adopted that the respondent No 1 (the university) in order to negate the valuable and lawful right of the petitioners, which have accrued to them with the lapse of time, has decided to take on campus exams but their classes were taken online, so how it is possible for the students to attend on campus exams, when they have not been delivered the lectures properly.
They claimed that 98 percent educational institutions are taking online exams due to the pandemic situation world-wide but the respondent university is not treating the students equally by deciding their policy to take on campus exams to be held from February 1st.
The petitioners contended that this is discrimination between the students of universities and it is a violation of constitutional rights enshrined in the Constitution of Pakistan 1973.
They added that public functionaries are required to act fairly and exercise their discretion in a structured manner in accordance with the canons for exercise of discretion laid down by the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
They maintained that the conduct of the respondents is arbitrary and ex facie discriminatory as the respondents want to take the livelihood of the petitioners in order to frustrate their right to be dealt in accordance with law.
Therefore, they prayed before the court to pass an order to the respondents to conduct online exams of the students due to this Covid-19 pandemic for the safe future of the students.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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