Why Jammu & Kashmir High Court ordered University of Kashmir to pay ₹1 lakh to student

The High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh recently directed the University of Kashmir to pay ₹1 lakh as compensation to a BA student who was declared as 'failed' despite having secured passing marks on a re-evaluation of his paper [Abdul Basit vs University of Kashmir]..Justice Javed Iqbal Wani also criticised the University for having wrongly applied a rule governing revaluation marks ("Statute 10") to unfairly scale down the student's pass marks, thereby compelling him to re-appear for the exam. "The illegality and arbitrariness on the part of the respondents (University authorities) is manifest and writ large, besides being patently wrongful, undoubtedly constituting a fit case for grant of compensation in favour of the petitioner ... the instant petition is disposed of with a direction to the Respondent-University to pay an amount of ₹1 lakh to the petitioner as damages," the Court ordered in a May 10 judgment..The High Court was hearing a petition filed in 2019 by one Abdul Basit who had pursued a BA course offered by the University of Kashmir. After writing the fifth semester examination for 2017-18 session, Basit was shown to have failed in the General English paper as he only secured 27 marks as against the required pass mark of 38 marks.However, he later found that one of his answers in the exam had not been evaluated. After he applied for a re-valuation of his paper, he was initially found to have secured 40 marks. However, the University scaled down these marks from 40 to 34 marks by applying a revaluation rule that was relevant if the difference in marks upon a revaluation was more than 30 per cent. The University proceeded to declare that he had failed the exam and that he would have to re-appear for the test. He later passed the re-examination. Meanwhile, he filed a petition before the High Court questioning the University's decision fail him the first place despite securing 40 marks on re-evaluation..Basit's counsel contended that the student's rights have been violated as an unknown rule was invoked to cut down his marks. It was argued that the University had tried to cover-up their unfair acts by compelling the student to re-appear for the exam.The University countered that the student could not claim any relief by invoking the writ jurisdiction of the High Court since none of his rights have been violated..After considering the rival contentions, the Court rejected the University's stance and found that the rule applied by the University to scale down the student's marks was not applicable in this case.The Court found that the University had arbitrarily and illegally applied the said rule in Basit's case. As a result of such unfair and unreasonable actions, the Court opined that grave prejudice was caused to the student since he was forced to reappear for the examination afresh."The mindless action of the respondent-University for having applied the statute wrongly to the case of the petitioner-student pertaining to the paper in question inasmuch as compelling the petitioner to reappear in the examination again disregarding the marks secured by the petitioner in the paper in question after re-revaluation/re-checking is apparent and the petitioner thus cannot be left remediless and ... necessitates that the petitioner be compensated by payment of damages in Public Law," the Court concluded..Accordingly, the University of Kashmir was directed to pay ₹1 lakh to the student as damages within a period of four weeks..Advocate Bhat Fayaz Ahmed appeared for the student, whereas Senior Advocate Syed Faisal with Advocate Asif Maqbool appeared for the University..[Read Judgment]