In professional legal education, attendance rules are essential but can be pragmatically applied to allow bright students to take compensatory classes and special exams to avoid undue stress from backlog.

ORDER

This Writ Petition is filed by N.Neeraja a final year student undergoing her Law course in Chettinad School of Law, Chengalpattu, which is under the auspices of the deemed to be university namely chettinad Academy of Research and Education.

2.The case of the petitioner is that the petitioner joined the Law course for the academic session 2021- 2026 and now she is in the final year in her 9^th semester. While so, during the 6^th semester in view of her pursuit of other academic activities including internship under an organisation called Pacta which is a firm that works in policy making and working with other learned Advocates who are in the field of policy making and law, she could not attend all the classes. Therefore, she was not permitted to write the examination and then the ensuing semester she did the compensatory class and then she fall sort of the attendance in respect of that semester and as such the matter kept on postponing and now she is in the 9^th semester. Now the current subjects of Labour Law, Principles of Taxation Law, property law and Banking Law, she is going to write in this current semester. She has a backlog of nine papers, that is, Election Law, Family Law II, Company Law II, Victimology which is of the 6^th semester and Privacy Law, Land Law, Health Laws, Moot Court, Drafting, Pleadings, Conveyancing of 9^th semester. As far as the present semester is concerned, it is stated on behalf of the School of Law that she is again short of the mandatory 70% attendance. According to the student, her biometric shows more than 70% and if the biometric is strictly looked into that doesn't match the physical attendance register extract that is produced before the court. Even the physical attendance register extract is produced only in respect of two subjects and not in respect of the other three subjects.

3.I have heard the learned counsel appearing on behalf of the petitioner in detail.

4.The learned counsel took the court through the extraordinary academic performance of the student right from class X and the certificates that are given by the respective firms and the mentors. The some of the articles that are co- authored by the students are also attached along with the typed set of papers. I am of the view that the student is brilliant and one can see that she is in a position to self study for herself.

5.It is in this background, the learned counsel would also rely upon the judgement of the Division Bench of the Delhi High Court in the matter of In Re: Suicide Committed by Sushant Rohilla, Law Student of I.P. University Vs. Respondent 2025 [ SCC Online Del 7920 ] where the Delhi High Court took into consideration the enormous stress and strain the students have these days and directed the Bar Council to revisit the policy relating to attendance and in the interregnum restrained the universities not to stop students from taking the examination for attendance shortage and suggested such other measures such as compensatory classes etc,.

6.I heard Mr.S.R.Raghunathan, the learned counsel appearing on behalf of the Bar Council of India. The learned counsel would point out to the provisions contained in the Bar Council of India Rules, including the definition of “Legal Education Committee” and would submit that the unique nature of legal education and the rules that are framed by the Bar Council of India is not considered by the Division Bench of the Delhi High Court. While there should be no two opinion that the process of insisting upon the attendance should not cause any trauma or undue stress on the students, at the same time, the rules were framed taking into account the various reasons that are prevalent throughout the country.

7.It is not the student like the petitioner alone who are taken into account, there were letter pad colleges which were collecting monies even for marking fake attendance and the students who are not able to write even one paragraph graduated out of the Law school. The situation prevalent t