Mumbai: A retired teacher moved the Bombay High Court challenging the decision of the Maharashtra government to issue degrees to final year students without holding their last semester exams. The HC has asked the teacher to implead University Grants Commission (UGC) so that its stand could be heard too.
A bench of Justices Amjad Sayed and Makarand Karnik was moved by Dhananjay Kulkarni, a former teacher, through advocate Uday Warunjikar challenging the government resolution (GR) issued on June 19, 2020.
By virtue of the GR, the state had decided not to hold the final exams and instead issue the degree certificates to the graduate level students for the current academic year, owing to the continuous lockdown and spread of the pandemic.
In his plea, Kulkarni claimed that the UGC had in April 2020 ordered all the universities to conduct their final exams. However, after this, some student organisations wrote to the minister of technical and higher education to cancel the exams and accordingly, the ministry cancelled all the exams in Maharashtra.
On Tuesday, when the bench led by Justice Sayed took up the matter for hearing, it noted that UGC was not added as a respondent in the PIL and adjourned the matter till a further date, to enable Kulkarni to make UGC a party to the petition.
