A group of college students disrupted the judicial proceedings in the Madras High Court on Friday by logging into the virtual court in large numbers and creating chaos in their anxiety to know the outcome of cases filed against cancellation of arrear examinations.
Justices M. Sathyanarayanan and R. Hemalatha were shocked to find as many as 350 participants having logged in to virtual court early in the morning though the cases filed against the cancellation of arrear examinations had been listed only as the 26th item in the cause list for the day.
The judges found it very difficult to conduct regular court proceedings because of disturbance caused by the students who had failed to mute their microphones. After warning the students of stern action, the judges logged out and directed the host to remove all unnecessary participants.
While some of the students pleaded with the judges to not interfere with the cancellation of arrear examinations, others used the virtual medium to hold casual chats with each other. The confusion created by the students led to delay in commencing the regular court proceedings and consequently the cases against cancellation of the arrear examinations did not reach till the end of the day.
The cases had been filed by E. Balagurusamy, former Vice-Chancellor of Anna University and advocate B. Ramkumar Adityan who felt that it was not right on the part of the State government to cancel arrear examinations for all arts, science, engineering and Master of Computer Application students but for those pursuing final year. They said that letting students pass without clearing the arrears would demoralise the meritorious.
Since the cases could not be heard on Friday, they would now be listed again on Tuesday as per the procedure followed by the court.
