Mumbai: A Government Resolution (GR) brought out about final year exams of students created further chaos and added to further confusion on the issue. While the government granted option to students to do away with exams, the procedure of writing a letter seeking exemption from exams, left much scope for confusion.
Education minister Uday Samant stated in a live address on June 19 that final year students of both professional and non-professional courses could either take or drop exams and would be promoted using aggregate scores of earlier Semesters. Samant explained that this decision was taken keeping health aspects of students as also to ensure that the further education abroad, job or careers of students were not affected in any way.
In its GR, the state has clearly stated that with 41 colleges and 198 hostels taken up as quarantine centers, it was not in a position to conduct exams for 7,34,516 students from non-professional courses and 2,83,937 students from professional courses. However, district collectors were expected to facilitate exams for final year students of varied courses in their jurisdictions for those who opt to take exams.
“Students are expected to give an undertaking on whether they choose or not to give exams. Where and how will they give the undertaking – offline or online? Do the University’s in Maharashtra have that kind of apparatus to receive and respond to so many applications? ” questions Siddharth Ingle, student leader and founder of the Maharashtra Students Union (MASU).
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The MASU has already written to the Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court seeking his intervention on the issue and intends to seek further legal recourse on the same . Even as students are confused, the Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party continue to feud over this issue.
Former education minister and BJP legislator from Bandra Adv Ashish Shelar, has been tweeting against the bungling of the government on this issue time and again .On June 19, he tweeted questioning about how could the state treat students with ATKT differently than those who have cleared all subjects.
The state is yet to decide on the fate of the ATKT (Allowed To Keep Terms) students and vice chancellors will decide their fate along with education department officials in a few days, Samant promised.
State has asked the apex body conducting various professional courses like Engineering, Hotel Management and Catering Technology, Pharmacy, Architecture, Applied Arts and Crafts etc to approve its decision.
“Either the State is not doing its homework properly or they seek to deliberately keeping the issue hot. How else can you explain the fact that while the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) has clearly stated on June 6 that the state universities would have to take “judicious call based on local requirements and necessities of the time” why is the state referring back its decisions to the apex body in the Center for ratification ?” questions Ingle.
Samarvir Singh, a fourth year law student says, “While the state has cancelled exams as we wanted, it has further confounded the issue by inserting the provision to seek approval from the apex authority, which is the Bar Council of India (BCI) in our case. This is despite some universities in other states cancelling exams independently without taking BCI’s approval.”
