Due to which students have been “unfairly deprived” of an opportunity to meet the prescribed attendance criteria.

New Delhi: The Delhi high court on Friday came down heavily on Delhi University law teachers for “illegally” detaining around 500 students for lack of attendance and ordered holding of supplementary exams, saying it was a “failure” of the faculty.

Granting relief to the law students, Justice Rekha Palli said the shortfall of attendance was caused due to “failure of faculty of law to conduct minimum classes as prescribed under the Bar Council of India rules.”

The court passed a slew of directions and directed the law faculty members to conduct, within eight weeks, at least 139 hours of extra classes/tutorials for those students who are desirous to attend the lectures to make up shortage of attendance.

The court said the shortfall of attendance was caused due to "failure of faculty of law to conduct minimum classes as prescribed under the Bar Council of India rules."

The court made the directions while disposing of 21 separate petitions filed by 53 students, challenging the memorandum issued by the law faculty on May 7 and May 8 and May 10, detaining several students of fourth and sixth semester from appearing in the exams for not having an aggregate attendance of 70 percent in the semesters, as required by the BCI Rules.

In its 46-page verdict, the court said there was a prima facie reason to believe that Delhi Univ-ersity Teachers Associa-tion strikes saw "large scale participation" of  members from law faculty, due to which students have been “unfairly deprived” of an opportunity to meet the prescribed attendance criteria.

The court said that the faculty must allow those students, who were detained due to shortage of attendance and could not be granted the interim relief, to take their supplementary examinations for the semester concerned.