Clerical Error at University Can't Make Student Suffer: Supreme Court Orders Release of Law Graduate's Degree
The Supreme Court has come to the rescue of a law student whose marksheets and degree were held back by her university, ruling that she cannot be made to suffer for a clerical mistake committed at the university's end.
A three-judge bench of Justice Vikram Nath, Justice Augustine George Masih and Justice Sandeep Mehta directed Manav Bharti University to hand over the student's marksheets for the 7th to 10th semesters, her degree, and other relevant documents, including the Character Certificate and the Migration Certificate, within four weeks of receiving the judgment.
The appellant had completed the five-year BA.LLB programme at the university's Department of Law for the 2016-2021 batch. She was issued bonafide certificates, a hostel identity card for the session July 2016 to June 2017, and detailed marks certificates for the 1st to 6th semesters. The university also certified her subject-wise grade points for the 8th and 9th semesters. However, her marksheets for the 7th to 10th semesters and her degree were never issued.
The trouble began after a complaint about the alleged sale of degrees by the university led to several cases being registered against its then administration, and its records were seized during the investigation. The university told the appellant that while her name appeared in the Green Sheet Register for the session 2016-2017, it was missing from the admission disclosure list provided by the Special Investigation Team, and therefore her marksheets, degree and other documents could not be issued or verified.
The bench noted that the university's own affidavit admitted that, due to a clerical and inadvertent human error by its previous administration, the appellant's name was left out of the admission disclosure list sent to HP-PERC, and the name of one Pankaj Kumar was mistakenly forwarded instead. The court also took note that Pankaj Kumar had independently taken admission in 2015 for the academic session 2015-2020 under a different admission and registration number, and that his inclusion in place of the appellant was a clerical mismatch, not a substitution or deletion of her actual admission.
"From the perusal of above-quoted affidavit and the documents on record, it is undisputed that the Appellant was a bona fide student of the university, admitted against an allotted seat, who appeared in and cleared all her examinations. The exclusion of her name from the admission disclosure list is, on the university's own admission, a clerical error at its own end in which the Appellant had no part, and the Appellant cannot be made to bear its consequences and suffer," the bench held.
The court found that the appellant had been deprived of her documents for no fault of hers for a substantial period of time, and that sending her to another court to resolve the matter was not called for. It accordingly allowed the appeal and set aside the earlier order as it applied to her. Advocate Dhriti Sharma represented the petitioner, while AOR Bhupender Singh appeared for the respondent.
Source: Verdictum