The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed part of a Delhi High Court judgment that had prohibited law colleges and universities from barring students from writing exams for failing to meet the minimum attendance requirement.

A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta stayed “paragraph 249” of the impugned judgment that did not make attendance mandatory after the Bar Council of India and several national law universities (NLUs) said it was being used to skip classes, an argument with which the apex court prima facie seemed to agree.

“All the NLUs are suffering. No student wants mandatory attendance. Even those who have passed out are supporting the students,” the bench orally observed while staying the judgment. “What will the teachers be doing if students don’t come to the classes?” it added.

Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for one of the aggrieved universities, complained that the high court judgment was enabling law students who lacked discipline to skip college classes, in turn affecting the quality of education.

The senior counsel also complained about different high courts taking different views on the issue of mandatory attendance, urging the apex court to lay down the law on the subject.

While staying the operation of “para 249” of the high court judgment, the bench tagged the matter along with another petition filed by student Prakruthi Jain challenging biometric attendance in law colleges and some other measures initiated by the BCI to ensure that students did not skip classes. These will be further heard on July 21.

The high court had delivered the judgment in November last year while taking suo motu cognisance of the death of law student Sushant Rohilla by suicide after allegedly being barred from sitting for the semester exams due to lack of requisite attendance. Rohilla, a third-year law student, had hanged himself at his home here on August
10, 2016.