Students bodies threaten agitation demanding cancellation if exams
By IT Correspondent
Delhi/ Mumbai, Aug 29:
The Supreme Court on Saturday ruled that the final year college/university examinations must be held this year, since the states cannot promote students without final year examinations and if need be the states can ask for the dates to be deferred beyond September 30, due to the coronavirus crisis.
Delivering the ruling through video-conferencing, a bench comprising Justices Ashok Bhushan, R Subhash Reddy and MR Shah, said that as for the dates of examinations, the states can approach the University Grant Commission (UGC). The bottom-line is that all the students will have to take the final exams. Under Disaster Management Act, the states can only postpone the examinations but cannot cancel them, the bench stated.
Several petitions, including one by the Yuva Sena of Maharashtra minister Aaditya Thackeray, had called for the exams to be cancelled because of Covid-19. The petitions referred to difficulties faced by students at a time all educational institutions were closed due to the virus crisis. They had argued that students have completed five semesters and had a Cumulative Grade Point Average or CGPA, which could be the basis for results without final examinations. But the SC ruled that “internal assessments will not suffice.
The national education body UGC had said that final year college exams must be held by September 30. The exams are a must to “protect the academic future of students” and degrees cannot be given without examinations, it had said. During hearings, the UGC told the SC that the directive on exams was “not a diktat” but states cannot take a decision to confer degrees without exams; the state were free to extend the deadline.
After the judgement, the Maharashtra Minister for Higher and Technical Education Uday Samant said that over the next few days, he will speak to state university V-Cs and make a formal announcement on dates and exam pattern. If need be we will approach the UGC for suitable dates to conduct the examinations.
The UGC had stated that the exams can be held online, off line or blended mode. The issued guidelines must be mandatory followed the UGS had stated. The six states namely Punjab, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, West Bengal and Delhi had announced restrictions against the Union HRD ministry’s plan citing the plan of conducting final year examinations in COVID-19 crisis.
The UGC had given examples of universities abroad, “Top-ranking universities of the world have opted for final exams to be done remotely. Like Princeton and MIT, University of Cambridge, Imperial College of London, University of Toronto and McMaster, University of Heidelberg and University of Hong Kong have resorted to the online technology-based model of conducting exams, it had stated.
In the meanwhile the students who were out of touch with studies due to uncertainty are in a bind and some of the students have threatened to launch an agitation to demand cancellation of the examinations. On Friday, a student organization “Vidyarthi Bharati”, submitted a memorandum to tehsildar of Kalyan (near Mumbai), demanding that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should issue an ordinance cancelling the examinations. The office bearers of “Vidyarthi Bharati”-Manjiri Dhuri and Pooja Mudhane said that if the examinations are forced upon at this late stage, they will be forced to launch an agitation.
However the BJP, which is in opposition in Maharashtra, hailed the SC’s decision to hold the examinations and lambasted the Maharashtra Government saying that the decision to cancel the examination was taken by the government without consulting even the Governor, who is the chancellor of universities. BJP MLA Ashish Shelar said that the decision to cancel the examination was immature and showed a lack of farsightedness of the Government.
