A nursing college in Kalaburagi was ordered to pay a fine of rupees one crore by the Karnataka High Court as compensation to 10 students for the loss of one year as they were subjected to fraud.
According to The New Indian Express, the court had ordered the college to pay Rupees 10 lakh to each of the ten students. The court said that the college has to financially level with the losses that the students had incurred. Although the amount is inadequate, the money would provide aid to them.
Justice Suraj Govindaraj passed the order while directing the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) to initiate action against the college, including filing a criminal complaint and administrative action against the college.
Documents fabricated
The court noted that the college did not admit the students before April 7, 2022, but fabricated the register of admission by pasting a sheet of paper to include the names of the students as if to contend that they had been admitted within time and their details could not be uploaded due to technical glitches.
The court also added that the college had "played with the lives of the students and their parents who had aspirations to admit their wards to the college to study BSc Nursing." The court deemed that the omissions and commission on the part of the college was highly unfair to the students.
"The data has not been uploaded since admission has been carried out post the last date, without probably informing the students at the last date by collecting fees from them and inserting their names in the admission register now leads to a situation where on account of the refusal of the RGUHS, they would not be able to take up examination for this year," it said.
The college then moved the court after it sought directions to the Medical Education Department to consider its representation to enable the web portal to allow uploading the details of students and issue registration numbers for appearing in first-year BSc Nursing Course examinations.
Previously it had admitted 10 students for the academic year 2021-22, but the details could not be uploaded on April 4, 2022 due to glitches on the portal. The college wrote to RGUHS in January 2023, requesting to open the portal for enabling online submission of applications. But no action was taken by RGUHS, the college contended in its petition.
