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Mumbai: Students of 18 different student organisations of Maharashtra came together under a United Students Front’ to demand online or digital format in final year examinations to help ensure early results in the state. The students stated that they had already suffered much due to the delayed exams and sought that results be declared prior to September 30.
In a joint drafted statement, the students suggested that the state could go in for online or digital exam formats like choice based credit system, multi-choice questions, optical marks recognition, open books exams, open choice assignments etc for exams. It ruled out the option of physical exams of any form due to the current pandemic and lockdown scenario.
It also demanded that the state must ensure that no student was left out of the examination process due to issues like network connectivity or transportation, in order to make it a fair and equitable process.
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Meanwhile, the Maharashtra government announced setting up of a core committee of Vice-Chancellors (VC) to recommend on how and when to conduct final year examinations in the state. The committee would submit its report on August 30 and the state is expected to decide on exams by August 31.
With the Supreme Court (SC) making exams mandatory for graduation, the state is now working on how to conduct exams safely and simply without causing much inconvenience to students. The VC’s will also study the University Grants Commission (UGC) guidelines for conducting examinations amidst Covid. It will also study how the universities of Delhi, Goa, Banaras and Madhya Pradesh had conducted their exams.
This was announced following the state higher and technical education minister Uday Samant video conferencing with vice-chancellors of 13 non-agricultural universities in the state.
Meanwhile, the issue of final year exams continued to be a political slugfest between leaders of the ruling party Shiv Sena and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party especially on twitter. While the BJP derided the Sena for making it an ego issue, the Sena claimed that it had fought for the interests of students.