Legal Correspondent
Shimla, November 17
The HP High Court today issued notices to the Registrar and the Controller of Examination of Himachal Pradesh University (HPU), Shimla, on a petition alleging irregularity committed by university officials while evaluating the answer sheet of a student and causing irreparable damage to his career.
The court passed the order on a petition filed by Keshav Singh, who stated that he was a student of B.Sc (Maths) of Government College, Hamirpur, and appeared in the fifth semester exams in November 2019. In February 2020, he appeared in the IIT exam and scored 40.33 out of 100 marks and became eligible for admission to M.Sc at the NIT.
In June 2020, the results of the fifth semester were declared and he was given only five out of 70 marks in one of the papers, due to which he could not get admission to the NIT. He stated that he had attempted most of the questions in the paper, so he applied for its rechecking.
On rechecking, 42 marks were increased and he scored 47 marks in the paper. But the re-evaluation result was declared after the counselling for M.Sc and by that time all seats had been filled and the petitioner did not get admission.
The petitioner alleged that though he again cleared the IIT exam this year, mental harassment and depression, which he had faced, caused irreparable damage. He lost one year in this era of cut-throat competition and thousands of students overtook him. Due to the negligence of the university, he was deprived of investing his one year for making his career bright, as he could not attend the counselling for the IIT, NIT and JAM and could not fill forms for any competitive exam. The university is liable to pay him compensation for his loss. The petitioner prayed for direction to the university authorities to pay him an adequate compensation and adopt a fair and proper manner of checking papers so that in future nobody faces the same situation.
While issuing notices the court directed the university to file its reply within three weeks and posted the matter for December 8.
Courtesy: Tribune News Service