HC orders grace marks for 9 MBBS students

Chennai AGENCIES





The Madras high court has annulled a Pondicherry University rule doing away with the awarding of grace marks to MBBS students, and asked the University to give relief to nine students who had failed a practical examination. A division bench of justices Huluvadi G Ramesh and S Vimala struck down the new rule, which discontinued the practice of awarding the grace marks from May 2016, terming it “arbitrary and discriminatory“.
The bench gave its ruling on an appeal by the students against the February 15 verdict of a single-judge bench, which had turned down their pleas for the grace marks.

Accordingly , the bench asked the University's controller of examinations to revise examination results after awarding the grace marks. While rejecting the students' plea, the single judge bench had upheld the University's rule, doing away with the practice of awarding grace marks from May 2016.

In their appeals to the division bench against the single-judge bench ruling, the students had submitted that they had joined the MBBS course in 2012 and had appeared for the examinations of four subjects in December 2016. They cleared all subjects, but failed in a practical exam due to shortage of two to eight marks. They said when they had joined the course, the University regulations provided for the grace marks.