Legal Correspondent
Legal Angles Patna
The global pandemic Covid-19 has disturbed the whole nation unexpectedly. Nobody expected to experience the nation-wide lockdown for such a long period of time. This Pandemic brought many ups and down in everyone’s life and especially in the life of students where they were demanded with the fees for their academics, hostel and mess despite of the facts that all the facilities were not being provided to the students. In Bihar, educational institutions are closed from March, 2020, due to this global pandemic and the subsequent lockdown in the whole nation. No facilities in respect of Hostel or mess were provided to any student. As per the guidelines of the UGC, the educational institutions resumed the classes through virtual mode and conducted the online classes. For this students were required to enroll in the new semester and had to pay fees as demanded by their respected universities. This worried students if they would have to pay the charges for the Hostel and Mess services although the facilities were not being provided to them due to lockdown and Hotel and Mess were closed due to the same. Moreover, students across the nation raised their concern as not to take the fees for Hostel and Mess but the Administration of few educational institutions denied entertaining their concern whereas the other educational institution did not respond against the same.
But amidst this pandemic, a good news for the students of Central University of Bihar (Bihar) came as the Hon’ble Patna High Court, on 04 November, 2020, ordered the Central University of South Bihar as not to charge any fees from any student in the name of Hostel and Mess charges for the period of time till when the Hostel and Mess Services are closed and no services are available to the students. Further, the Hon’ble Court ordered that from now there will be no compulsion on the students to pay and purchase the Insurance Policy under Group Health and Accident Cover Scheme facilitated by the Central University of South Bihar. Students will pay and purchase such insurance only if they wish to purchase such insurance policy.
This said order was passed in the case where CUSB Alumni Association of the Central University of South Bihar (Bihar) had filed a Public Interest Litigation against the arbitrary and unreasonable demand of fees from the students amidst this pandemic where the said University adopted the coercive method while demanding the fees and directed to pay the fees within the predetermined time as prescribed by the University or else the University shall not allow the student to attend the online classes being conducted by the University. The CUSB Alumni Association is convened by Vivek Raj Aaaryan, A Media Department pass-out of year 2015. This association was represented in the Court by Adv Vishal Kumar Singh. The other advocates associated with this petition were Anjani Kumar, Ashwani Kumar, and Amar Vivek.
Read the full judgment here: