Court cannot do charity contrary to the legal position, remarks Delhi HC
Dec 10, 2020
New Delhi [India], December 10 : A court cannot do charity contrary to the legal position, the Delhi High Court has remarked while turning down the plea of a student challenging his school's decision refusing to allow him to appear for the 10th class board exams due to shortage of attendance.
A division bench of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice Prateek Jalan refused to entertain the plea that challenging a single-judge bench order, which dismissed the student's plea against the school's decision.
"It should be kept in mind that Court cannot do charity contrary to the legal position," the division bench said adding that, in the present case, the single-judge bench has rightly found that the material placed by the petitioner was woefully inadequate to arrive at this conclusion.
The student, in his plea, had submitted that he could not attend the school classed regularly owing to health issues and added that he was hospitalized from October 16, 2019, to October 21, 2019, at Saroj Super Speciality Hospital for treatment of "enteric fever with AFI with Dehydration".
"We are not inclined to accept this contention of the appellant. Howsoever liberally the by-law is to be interpreted, the Court must be satisfied that the illness of the student concerned was of nature which disabled him/her from attending classes, even to the extent of 60% of classes," the order, which was passed last week, said.
"The appellant was hospitalized only for six days in the month of October 2019, from October 16, 2019, to October 21, 2019. Therefore, looking into the documents placed regarding the illness from which this appellant (original petitioner) was suffering, we find that the case was not covered under Bye-Law No.14 (ii)," the court said.
During the hearing before the single-judge bench, it was pointed out that the CBSE Chairman had rejected the case of the appellant for condonation of shortage of attendance on medical conditions as the same does not fall under the category of exceptional circumstances.
The bench had also noted that the applicant was initially not allowed to appear in Class X Board Examination on the ground that he had only 43 per cent attendance in the classes held in the academic session 2019-2020, whereas the minimum prescribed limit is 75 percent.
