New Delhi, Nov 19, 2024
The Punjab and Haryana High Court has disposed of a plea filed by a law student from OP Jindal Global University who had challenged the varsity’s decision to “fail” him for allegedly submitting an “AI generated” assignment.
A bench of Justice Jasgurpreet Singh Puri decided to close the proceedings after the university agreed to issue fresh transcripts for all the trimesters of the petitioner, an LLM student.
Earlier on November 11, Justice Puri-led Bench decided to issue notice to the University’s Registrar and Haryana’s Directorate of Higher Education on a plea filed by the petitioner alleging that no opportunity was given to him to rebut the allegations of plagiarism.
In the course of the hearing, the University apprised the P&H High Court that the petitioner had concealed the fact that he had already cleared the re-sit examination for ‘Law and Justice in a Globalizing World’ and as an extraordinary measure, it has restored internal assessment marks and petitioner’s final grade would be reflected in the transcript without any asterisks or annotations.
It contended that using Al-generated texts for submitting any academic work would constitute a violation of the University Grants Commission (Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations, 2018, and any similarity in excess of 60 per cent content makes the student liable to be expelled.
However, the University said that it decided not to resort to the highest penalty which would have severely jeopardized the petitioner’s academic interest and professional endeavours, especially in light of the fact that he is a practising advocate.
In his petition, Kaustubh Anil Shakkarwar said that the University could not produce any evidence of the use of “AI generated material” and breached the principles of natural justice by non-supply of documents.
“The petitioner requested documentary evidence from the university asking the specific rule which prohibits the use of AI. Importantly, the said documents were never supplied, and the “Unfair Means Committee” the panel was pre-conceived in their opinion and did not hear him,” added Shakkarwar.(Agency)
