New Delhi, May 31: “Sorry, Sir, but the traffic was real bad.”

Next time you come in late for work, you can tell that to your boss. If he acts difficult, ask him to check out what the court said.

The excuse of traffic jams, a stock one with habitual late-comers, today got the sanction of Delhi High Court, which allowed two students to sit for their semester exams despite short attendance.

Although the relief came in a case involving classroom attendance, the happiest class would be those employees who have made it a habit of reporting late for work.

The court, however, denied the relief to three students who, too, didn’t have the required attendance, but made it clear why it was making the distinction.

While the reprieved two had the required overall attendance of 75 per cent and missed the 65 per cent cut-off in individual subjects, two of those not allowed to sit for their exams had neither the required overall attendance nor subject attendance.

The third had the required subject attendance of 65 per cent but fell short by 5 per cent in overall attendance.

All five are postgraduate students of the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), which insists that students need to have 75 per cent overall attendance as well as the required cut-off in individual subjects to sit for exams.

The court said sympathy and emotions couldn’t “override” academic standards. “There is no royal road to education,” the court told the disallowed three who had cited typhoid, an ailing mother and swine flu as the reasons for missing class.

“Absenteeism has become chronic in the present day and it has to be cured by making the students realise that education teaches only those in attendance. Students take admissions in various courses and they are required to fulfil the laid down attendance norms of each university/college or institution.”

The court said students, because of their “youthful age”, sometimes bunk classes. But sometimes, “due to certain exigencies, medical or otherwise”, they are not able to attend classes. But for that, the court noted, the institute had kept the “provision of abstaining from 25 per cent in overall subjects and 35 per cent” in individual subjects.

One of the girls allowed to sit for her exam, Ritika Jain, told the court she travelled by public transport and reached late some days because of heavy traffic. As a result, she had been marked absent and fallen short of the required attendance in two subjects, though her overall attendance was 77 per cent.

The other reprieved student, Gargi Maheshwari, who had an overall attendance of 78 per cent, said she travelled from Modinagar in Uttar Pradesh, about 50km from Delhi.

The court said the two students had “missed the morning session”, which lasts from 9.15am till 11.15am, “due to traffic congestion”, but their attendance charts “clearly” showed they were “attending the other subsequent classes on the same day”.

Among the three not allowed to sit, Kangana Modi (overall 74 per cent, subject attendance 63 per cent) had swine flu, while Kusum (overall 68 per cent, subject 59 per cent) had been suffering from typhoid.

Priyanka Agarwal (overall 70 per cent, subject 65 per cent) could not attend classes because her mother had an accident and her father had been transferred to Agra during the six months her mother was bedridden.

The court said it could have been “sympathetic” to these students, but “sympathy and emotions cannot override the academic standards set out in the policy of an institute”.

The court also said that if these three were allowed to sit, the 100-odd students the NIFT had barred from appearing, all over its centres across India, in the July-December 2009 semester-end exam because of short attendance would be “demoralised”.