The main legal point established in the judgment is the obligation of educational institutions to ensure the timely submission of examination forms and the issuance of Admit Cards to students for their examinations.

JUDGMENT :

1. The present writ petition has been filed for issuance of direction upon the respondents calling upon them to show cause as to under what circumstances, the petitioners’ children, who are the students of the college-respondent No.4, have not been issued Admit Cards so as to enable them to appear in the Annual Intermediate (Arts) Examination, 2023 (Session 2021-23) [hereinafter after referred to as ‘the said examination’] despite the fact that they have successfully completed the course and have also paid the required examination fee. Further prayer has been made for issuance of direction upon the respondents to immediately issue Admit Cards to the petitioners’ children and to allow them to appear in the said examination to be conducted by the Jharkhand Academic Council (JAC), Ranchi.

2. Learned counsel for the petitioners submits that the petitioners’ children have passed Class-XI Intermediate Examination (Arts) (Session 2021-22) in the aforesaid college, whose descriptions are as under :

3. They also submitted their examination forms along with required fee in the office of the college-respondent No.4 for appearing in Intermediate (Arts) Examination, 2023, however, admit cards have not been issued to them by the respondent-JAC. Under the said compelling circumstance, the petitioners have approached this Court by filing the present writ petition.

4. A counter affidavit has been filed on behalf of the respondent Nos. 1 to 3 stating inter alia that online examination forms were invited from the students for appearing in the said examination vide Advertisement No. 67/2022. The date of filing up the examination forms was fixed from 30.09.2022 to 14.10.2022 without late fine and from 15.10.2022 to 19.10.2022 with late fine. The date of online submission of the examination forms was again extended vide till 30.11.2022 without late fine and from 01.12.2022 to 10.12.2022 with late fine. The said date was again extended vide Advertisement No. 79/2022 till 10.12.2022 without late fine and from 11.12.2022 to 20.12.2022 with late fine. The date for the said purpose was further extended vide Advertisement No. 83/2022 till 20.12.2022 without late fine and from 21.12.2022 to 04.01.2023 with late fine. The details of programme/routine regarding Annual Secondary & Intermediate Examination, 2023 was published in all the newspapers vide Advertisement No. 01/2023. One last chance was provided vide Advertisement No. 04/2023 to all the candidates to rectify their mistakes in any subject they are appearing. Thereafter, Admit Cards for the said examination were issued on 30.01.2023 and the practical examination has already started from 07.02.2023 which will be completed in the respective colleges by 04.03.2023. The theory examination of all the candidates will be conducted from 14.03.2023 to 05.04.2023 at different examination centres. The process of handing over the OMR sheets and plain answer paper sheets of the candidates appearing in the said examination at different centres has been started. Roll sheets and attendance sheets of the candidates appearing in the said examination are also being made available to the examination centres. Centre wise confidential material such as question papers etc. is being sent to all the districts. The petitioners’ children were got registered in Class-XI from the concerned college i.e. respondent No.4 whose registration Nos. are as follows :

(i) Khusboo Kumari, Registration No. 11031-RA-0046-2021

(ii) Komal Kumari, Registration No. 11031-RA-0499-2021

(iii) Ajay Gope, Registration No. 11031-RA-0236-2021

5. The examination forms of total 609 students have been submit