HC grants Interim Relief to MBBS student denied to write exam due to attendance shortfall, holds both theory, practical classes should be considered
Hyderabad: Observing that attendance in both theory and practical classes should jointly be considered for calculating the percentage of attendance for the medical students, the Telangana High Court on Monday provided relief to a final year MBBS student who had earlier been barred from appearing in the final examination due to attendance shortfall.
While considering the plea filed by Jonnalagadda Aruna, the HC bench of Chief Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice N Tukaramji passed an interim order and directed the Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences (KNRUHS) and the principal of Kamineni Medical College, Narjetpally, where the student is enrolled, to allow her in the exam scheduled to commence on February 21.
This comes after recently the HC bench had dismissed the plea of three MBBS students who had not been allowed to appear in the MBBS examinations as they could not fulfil the attendance requirements.
Earlier, 75 per cent of attendance was necessary for being eligible to appear in the exam. However, due to several problems resulting from COVID-19 pandemic, the authorities have now reduced it to 65 percent.
Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that while the students had claimed meeting the attendance requirements, the college and the university had submitted that the college had both manual and biometric processes in place and the students did not meet the prescribed attendance requirement.
In its order dated, the HC bench had mentioned, "Even after reducing the minimum attendance to 65%, the petitioners do not possess the required attendance. Though this Court has sympathy for the petitioners who are in final Year of MBBS Degree, this Court is not inclined to grant relief to them in view of the law laid down by the Apex Court and this court in the aforesaid judgments. Therefore, all the writ petitions are liable to be dismissed."
At that time, the HC single judge bench had dismissed the pleas by MBBS students including the plea of Jonnalagadda Aruna. The court had observed that medical students, their classes and administration fall under expert's domain and the courts should not interfere in such matters.
As per the latest media report by the Times of India, aggrieved by the single judge bench order, Aruna had approached the Division bench of the High Court. The bench perused the relevant notifications issued by the National Medical Commission and KNRUHS and noted that even though separate attendances had been recorded for theory and practical classes, the officials had only considered the theory classes for counting the attendance percentage.
It was observed by the HC division bench that if the practical classes had been taken into consideration, the concerned medical student would have crossed the 65 per cent benchmark, which was required for writing the exam.
In this regard, the bench opined that attendance of both the theory and practical classes need to be considered to calculate the correct percentage of attendance.
Therefore, granting interim relief to the medical student, the bench directed KNRUHS and the medical college to accept the fees from the student immediately and allow her to appear in the examination from Tuesday itself.
Further, the order of the Court was also made instantly available to enable the student to serve it to the college and the University.
