IMPORTANT POINT
The judgment established the principle that students have a limited number of attempts within a specified span period to clear their LL.B courses, and they are not entitled to special examinations after regular examinations have been conducted.

JUDGMENT (Oral)

1. The petitioners are presently ex-students of the Faculty of Law, University of Delhi.

2. Both the petitioners enrolled as students for the three years LL. B programme of the Law Faculty in the year 2020-2021. The programme was of six semesters, to culminate in the award of an LL.B. degree.

3. The second semester examination of both the petitioners was conducted in 2021. The results of the examinations were announced on 9 December 2021. We are concerned with the Public International Law paper of Petitioner 1 and the Evidence paper of Petitioner 2. Petitioner 1 passed Public International Law, whereas Petitioner 2 failed in Evidence.

4. Petitioner 1 desired to improve his performance in the Public International Law paper by attempting an improvement examination with the papers of his fourth semester. It is not in dispute that, by opting for sitting in such improvement examination, the original result stands effaced. In other words, when a student who appears in a particular paper decides to re-attempt the paper to improve his gradings, he has to sink or swim with the outcome of the improvement paper.

5. The petitioners gave their fourth semester examination in August 2022. With the fourth semester examination, Petitioner 1 also attempted the Public International Law paper as an improvement examination whereas Petitioner 2, having failed in the Evidence paper in his second semester, re-attempted the paper. Thus, in August 2022, with their fourth semester papers, Petitioner 1 re-attempted the Public International Law paper and Petitioner 2 re-attempted the Evidence paper.

6. This time, as ill luck would have it, Petitioner 1 failed in the Public International Law paper and Petitioner 2 also failed in the Evidence paper.

7. The result was that Petitioner 1 became a student who had failed in Public International Law in the improvement attempt taken in the fourth semester whereas Petitioner 2 was a student who had failed Evidence twice, first in the regular course in his second semester and secondly with his fourth semester papers.

8. In May 2023, Petitioner 1 once again attempted the Public International Law paper and Petitioner 2 re-attempted the Evidence paper, along with their regular sixth semester papers. This time, once again, Petitioner 1 failed Public International Law and Petitioner 2 failed Evidence.

9. The Law Faculty conducted one more examination for the second semester papers on 25 September 2023. This, however, was apparently for the students who had enrolled in the LL. B Programme in 2022-2023. The Notification, notifying the said examination, was issued by the University on 18 August 2023. The last date for submission of applications was 31 August 2023. Mr. Tripurari submits that, though the petitioners tried to log on to the website and enrol themselves for appearing in the said examination, the website did not allow students who had backlog papers in the second semester to appear.

10. As such, neither of the petitioners was permitted to sit in the said examination as each of them had already attempted the concerned papers i.e. Public International Law in the case of Petitioner 1 and Evidence in the case of Petitioner 2, three times.

11. It is in these circumstances, that the petitioners have filed the present writ petition before this Court, with a singular prayer, which is that they be permitted to sit in the second semester examination to be held on 25 September 2023 in the case of Petitioner 1 for Public International Law and in the case of Petitioner 2 for Evidence.

12. Though the petitioners prayed for being permitted to appear in the said examination on a provisional basis, no such interlocutory relief was granted by this Court and examinations came to be held on 25 September 2023 without either of the petitioners appearing in the said examination. In the circumstances, the petitioners amended the prayer clause in the present writ petition, to read thus:

"In the facts and circumstances of the case and