Dismissal of students from College set aside by High Court

A male and female student of S. Vellaichamy Nadar College near Madurai were dismissed from the college for having travelled together in a public bus and for having exchanged ‘indecent’ SMS. Both the students challenged the dismissal through separate writ petitions in the Madurai High Court.

Courtesy Clipart

Justice V.Dhanapal set aside the 2 dismissal orders of the College and held that the said orders were “ex-facie illegal, non-speaking and passed with total non-application of mind and suffered from violation of principles of natural justice as the petitioners were not provided a copy of the charges or the copy of the enquiry report to explain their stand”. The Principal’s decision of dismissal of students was held inappropriate for the following reasons -

1. Though usage of mobile phones by students inside educational institutions was undesirable, the college should have a separate mechanism of regulating this conduct. In this case, the college had banned the use of mobile phones but it did not provide a facility to deposit the mobile phones at the entrance gate or any other place.
2. Mere use of technological advancement which causes certain inconvenience, will not deprive the students of their right to education.
3. In a civilized and developed society the movement of students freely in public transport , irrespective of their gender, cannot be faulted by the institution. If it is construed in a wrong sense, there will not be any headway with regard to the day-to-day affairs of society among students, which leads to their mundane life and as-in-where-is state.

What intrigued me was not the pragmatic approach that the court took while handling this case but the fact that the concept of principles of natural justice, which is normally applied to disciplinary actions in the industry or any services, has been applied to this case too. While the actions of the students cannot be countenanced as a childish, they definitely have given the educational institutions a food for thought – they just cannot play Big Daddy.