The Delhi High Court on Tuesday has issued notice to the Delhi University on a plea seeking directions to make available educational instructions to specially-abled students in the same manner as they have been made abundantly available to other students.
A two-judge bench of Justice Hima Kohli and Justice Subramonium Prasad was hearing a petition filed by two law students from Delhi University Prateek Sharma and Diksha Singh, who have submitted that the open book online examination notification of Delhi University and the academic calendar notification/ guidelines issued by UGC on 30th of April 2020 does not provide any material or guidelines on how to conduct the examinations of specially-abled students.
The petitioners have filed an application seeking impleadment of Delhi University as a party respondent in the main writ petition which stated that the Central Government has not issued any notification or guidelines to provide specially-abled students with educational material and instructions that are being disseminated through universities, schools and colleges to other students.
The petitioners have submitted that the conduct of open book examination for specially-abled students is based on two important requirements, first of which is the availability of books in manner that can be accessed by specially-abled students and secondly the availability of complete set of instructions on the conduct of examination which are available to other classmates.
The petitioners have further stated that the notification of the conduct of online examination by the Delhi University without providing the specially-abled students with the same education and instruction would amount to segregation and therefore institutionalizes discrimination.
Hence, the petitioners urged the Court to pass an order staying the online open-book examination.
The bench today allowed the impleadment of Delhi University and University Grant Commission (UGC) and has listed the stay application on the next date of hearing on June 24.
The bench further dissatisfied with the reply filed by Ministry of Human Resource Development and Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has directed the said respondents to file a detailed report on the steps taken on the issue within a period of 2 weeks.
-India Legal Bureau