ISLAMABAD-The Islamabad High Court (IHC) Wednesday dismissed a petition filed by the students of a university against on-campus examinations.
A single bench of IHC comprising Justice Babar Sattar conducted hearing of the petition filed by Advocate Qazi Ghulam Dastgir on the behalf of the students Ali Bin Shafaat and Sharyar Abbasi. They cited National University of Modern Languages (NUML) and Higher Education Commission (HEC) as respondents. 
During the hearing, the lawyer requested the court to order the university to hold online exams due to the second wave of coronavirus pandemic. 
Justice Babar asked from him that why the petitioners did not approach the relevant forum Higher Education Commission (HEC) to have their grievance redressed. He added that the matter is related to the HEC and that the court could not do anything about it and disposed of the petition. 
In their petition, they adopted that the respondent No 1 (the university) in order to negate the valuable and lawful right of the petitioners, which have accrued to them with the lapse of time, has decided to take on campus exams but their classes were online so how is it possible for the students to attend on campus exams when they have not been delivered the lectures properly. 
They claimed that 98 per cent educational institutions are taking online exams due to pandemic situation worldwide but the respondent university is not treating the students equally by deciding their policy to take on campus to be held from February 1.
The petitioners contended that this is discrimination between the students of universities and it is violation of constitutional rights enshrined in the Constitution of Pakistan 1973. They added that public functionaries are required to act fairly and exercise their discretion in a structured manner in accordance with the canons for exercise of discretion laid down by the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
Therefore, they prayed to the court to pass an order to the respondents to conduct online exams of the students due to this Covid-19 pandemic for the safe future of the students.