SC calls for strict action against cheating in exams

Sympathy for students using unfair means during examinations is wholly out of place...

“Sympathy for students using unfair means during examinations is wholly out of place,” the Supreme Court has ruled, contending that this approach was necessary for the country’s progress.

“In academic matters, there should be strict discipline and malpractices should be severely punished. If our country is to progress, we must maintain high educational standards and this is only possible if malpractices in examinations in educational institutions are curbed with an iron hand,” said the Bench of Justices Altamas Kabir and Markandeya Katju.

The Bench even termed sympathy for a student who apologises after being caught using a chit of paper.

Justice Katju also censured the opinion of the single judge who, in his interim order, had stated that “if we care to think back to our student days, one would invariably recollect preparation of such kind of slips for refreshing the mind immediately before an examination, with no further intent to use it as an unfair or illegitimate manner”. The Judge underlined, “A judge is supposed to keep his personal view in the background and not inject them in judgments. What was done in his student days was surely irrelevant for deciding the case or even passing an interim order.”

Although the Bench said that a chit of paper seen before commencement of the examination was not a malpractice, it nonetheless clarified that “all that is relevant if the slip of paper found in the possession of the examinee pertained to the examination paper in question. If it does, then it is a malpractice.”

The court was hearing an appeal filed by a college, challenging a Delhi High Court’s ruling that it had condoned a student’s malpractice.

Contrary to the High Court’s view, the apex court held that the student, Vaibhav Singh Chauhan, a third-year student of Dr Ambedkar Institute of Hotel Management, Nutrition & Catering Technology, ought to be disqualified for one full year as he was found possessing a chit during his third-year examination in 2004-05.