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A suo moto writ petition was initiated after a third-year law student committed suicide in August 2016. The law student at Amity Law School allegedly committed suicide on account of being debarred from his final examinations per the university’s policy.
The Delhi High Court, recently, questioned the need for mandatory university attendance policies. The court observed that such policies can adversely affect students' mental health and that they should be reconsidered in light of modern policies to make education more meaningful.
The bench of Justice Pratibha M. Singh and Justice Amit Sharma observed that “The mental health of students, which is also affected due to the mandatory attendance norm, needs to be borne in mind while reconsidering attendance requirements”. The court also emphasized the need to streamline the grievance redressal mechanisms in universities and to consider distinctions between professional and non-professional courses.
Rohilla’s friend, Raghav Sharma, subsequently wrote a letter to the Chief Justice of India, stating that Rohilla was a meritorious student and was harassed by the authorities, particularly one faculty member, due to which he was depressed. He was forced to repeat an entire academic year.
The Supreme Court took suo moto cognizance of the letter written by Sharma, and a bench comprising of the then-Chief Justice TS Thakur as well as CJI DY Chandrachud, stated that it would consider laying down guidelines for attendance policies in universities.
The case was subsequently transferred to the Delhi High Court as a writ petition. In its latest hearing, the court observed that mandatory attendance requirements need to be reconsidered, citing the virtual mode of teaching that has been adopted after the COVID-19 Pandemic, as well as the concomitant changes in teaching styles. The court observed that the younger generation has a different perception of attendance policies, noting “Education is no longer restricted to classroom teaching or textbook education, and has, in fact, been extended to more practical areas.”
The court also noted that mandatory attendance policies might affect students’ mental health, urging universities to consider various possibilities such as whether attendance should be mandatory at all, what the minimum standards of this should be, and the need to positively encourage students to attend classes rather than penalizing them for non-attendance. The court acknowledged that many students might be employed even while they are studying, in order to support their families, as well as the difficulties faced by those in rural areas due to the lesser permeability of technology, citing the possibility of differential attendance policies for students in rural and urban areas.
The court, while questioning whether mandatory attendance requirements are needed at all, and the necessity of analyzing this issue in the light of global practices, stated its intention to form a Committee that would study these factors and place a report before the court, so that “Certain uniform practices can be evolved for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in respect of attendance requirements.”
In July 2017, a division bench of the Delhi High Court, in its hearings of the Supreme Court-led petition, made oral observations to the effect that the education system has become a “dehumanized machine”, that “mass produces clones”. The bench, comprising Justice Siddarth Mridul and Justice Najmi Waziri, observed that there was an “element of callousness” in how Amity University handled the student’s “cry for help” before he took this extreme decision. The bench further told the university to follow its rules but not at the cost of students’ lives.
Further, Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, in the 2017 hearing, argued that attendance policies are important to maintain academic standards and that the attendance of the student, which was 29 percent, had been marked by different professors and not at a single point in time. Senior Advocate Sibal further submitted before the court that the student had been staying with his parents, who were, rather than the university, responsible for knowing about his mental state, also contending that the allegations of harassment by the faculty member were ex-post facto, as they were not mentioned in the suicide note written by the student.
Per reports, Rohilla had written an email to the university’s founder, Ashok Chauhan, seeking help after being debarred. However, he did not receive any response. However, Amity University defended its stance in barring Rohilla from the examinations, issuing a statement expressing that the incident was not due to a fault on their part.
Case Title: Courts On Its Own Motion In Re: Suicide Committed (2024:DHC:6375-DB)
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