over 500 undergraduate students from mithibai college are set to lose a full academic year for lack of attendance after the supreme court on friday dismissed two special leave petitions filed by them against the collegethe petitions were filed based on a june 26 order of the bombay high court which noted that the college had relaxed rules in the past and students with attendance as low as 59 per cent were allowed to appear for examinationsthe mandatory attendance is 60 per centhowever the hc had dismissed another petition on the same issue on march 12 filed by 107 students observing that the court could not compromise with the attendance discipline following this the students had approached the supreme court with a special leave petitiona bench of justices am khanwilkar dinesh maheshwari and sanjiv khanna in a virtual hearing dismissed both the petitions on fridaythe college administration argued that after the semester ended it had informed the students that the overall attendance requirement was being reduced to 60 per cent from the earlier 75 per cent represented by senior advocate milind sathe who was assisted by advocate gaurav shrivastav the college said that now they were being expected to reduce the attendance requirement even further to 50 per centthe college also refuted the submission that students with 59 per cent were allowed to appear in the past clarifying that their marks were rounded up to 60 per cent and in some case absence of a few students was justified as they had to appear for their atkt examsthey also said that what the students were demanding would set a wrong precedencethe college which is an autonomous institution had debarred 551 senior college students from the arts commerce science and selffinancing courses they were to appear for the second fourth and sixth semester examinations