The High Court of Karnataka has directed the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) to send the answer papers of the undergraduate medical and dental courses students, who have approached the court, for third evaluation if the percentage difference of the marks awarded in the two evaluations is equal or more than 15% as per the university’s Ordinance Governing Multiple Valuations–2012.
Similarly, the court also directed the RGUHS to send the answer papers for the fifth evaluation if the difference in award of marks in the four evaluations is equal or more than 15% as per the 2012 Ordinance.
While narrating the manner in which the difference of marks awarded has to be calculated as per the 2012 Ordinance both for PG and UG medical and dental courses, the court made it clear that answer papers of only the petitioner-students will have to be sent for either third and fifth evaluation.
Justice Krishna S. Dixit passed the order while partly allowing the petitions filed by Menaka Mohan and others. The petitioners had failed in the exams conducted for PG medical and dental courses during May–June 2018 and UG medical and dental courses during June–July 2018.
The RGUHS had rejected the petitioner-students’ plea for third and fifth evaluation while claiming that their plea cannot be acceded to as the difference of marks is “less than 15% of the maximum marks prescribed for the papers concerned in the respective examinations” as per the Ordinance of 2017.
RGUHS’s contention
Rejecting the RGUHS’s contention that difference of marks is linked the maximum marks prescribed for the paper concerned in terms of the 2017 Ordinance, the court said “there is absolutely no material to prima facie show that these ordinances were ever published to the section of the people concerned i.e., the community of the students, if not to others as well.”
Comparing the ordinances of the RGUHS, the court said that the language of the 2012 Ordinance is different to that of the ordinances of 1999 and 2010 and pointed out that the expression “15% or more of the maximum marks prescribed for the paper” existed in the 1999 and 2010 ordinances is conspicuously left out in the 2012 Ordinance.
“The expressions — ‘the difference in award of marks between two valuations is 15%’, and ‘the difference in award of marks between four valuations is 15%’ are consciously employed in this Ordinance 2012. Therefore, the percentage difference is not as against the maximum marks prescribed for the paper unlike in 1999 and 2010 ordinances, but it is only the percentage difference of the two evaluations/four evaluations, as the case may be, inter se,” the court held.
Declining the petitioner-students’ plea against Digital Valuation System and to direct the RGUSH to provide model key answers to all question papers, the court asked the university to look into individual grievances about discrepancies in the DVS.
