The Supreme Court on Tuesday heard the pleas against the UGC guidelines to conduct final year exams by September 30 amidst the Covid-19 pandemic and reserved its judgement. There have been multiple hearings preceding this in the case. The latest hearing, which was on August 14, had pushed the issuing of the verdict to Tuesday (18-08-2020).
The bench was the same one that presided over the PM-Cares Fund case, headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan, with the Solicitor General Tushar Mehta representing the Centre.
The UGC has till now maintained that the final-year exams are to be conducted in order to issue the degree certificate. Following this, the governments of Maharashtra and New Delhi appealed to the Supreme Court and had refused to conduct the college final-year exams due to the rising number of Covid-19 cases. Senior Advocate Arvind Datar made submissions for the State of Maharashtra. He referred to the UGC Act and said that while UGC can lay down the standards, it couldn’t compel for exams to be held. He also noted that when the Disaster Management Act was invoked, it couldn’t be diluted and right to life preceded above everything else.
There were also questions raised about conducting exams without classes taking place for months, hostels which are now acting quarantine centres, and the commuting problems students would face as many would need to use public transport. Supreme Court then reserved its judgement and asked the counsels to submit a note on their submission in three days’ time.