Chennai, July 05: Stressing the need to maintain high level of discipline in professional colleges, the Madras high court has said that courts should go slow in interfering in the matter of enforcement of discipline in educational institutions.
Refusing to permit a law college student, who is an accused in the ghastly student violence in the college premises on November 12, 2008, to write examination, Justice M Jaichandren said: “Principal of the Dr Ambedkar Government Law College in Chennai has an onerous duty cast on him to maintain discipline amongst the students… No educational institution can be run in a disciplined manner without disciplinary powers being exercised by the authorities who are in the management of such institutions. There is no doubt that a high level of discipline is to be maintained in educational institutions, especially in the institutions responsible for creating well-trained lawyers, doctors and engineers who are expected to play important roles in the society.”
The present petition was filed by a student, S Ashok Kumar, who claimed that he had been included in the case by mistake and that he did not even go to the college on November 12, when the campus witnessed a bloody caste violence between two groups of students.
His counsel NGR Prasad said the boy should not be punished for no mistake of his, and that it was a case of mistaken identity.
Additional advocate-general P Wilson, however, maintained that the boy was named by two important witnesses in the case. Pointing out that Ashok Kumar had not attended classes even for a single day in the sixth semester, Wilson said that no student who had less than 66 per cent attendance could be permitted to write examination. “It would set a wrong precedent,” he said, adding that he must re-do the semester now.
Justice Jaichandren, concurring with Wilson, said the student has failed to meet the attendance requirements of the college. As for his name in the FIR, the judge said it would be premature for the court to hold that Ashok Kumar is not in any way connected to the November 12 violence on the campus. “It is for the investigating agency and for the authorities concerned to come to a conclusion based on the evidence available,” he said.
—Agencies