Delhi University postpones the final year exams yet again

In a meeting held on Wednesday, MHRD, along with the University Grants Commission decided to postpone the exams for final year students of Delhi University that were to be held from July 10. The official notice on the DU website says that the final year exams will now start after August 15 whereas the revised date sheet, along with other relevant details will be given in due course of time.

This is the second time Delhi University has decided to postpone the exams of final year students in 2020. The notice also extends to final year students of SOL and NCWEB. This move by the DU administration has come right in the middle of a High Court hearing in Delhi which will decide whether or not the Open Book Examination should be held.

Even as advocates repeatedly highlight that the ambiguity and uncertainty will cause mental trauma to the students, DU decided to release the notification postponing the final year exams after suggestions from MHRD. Just 24 hours prior to its release, UGC had given a press release deciding against the scrapping of online OBE.

As of now, a ruling from the high court is pending and is being presided over by a single-judge bench of Justice Pratibha M Singh. Final year students have been anxiously waiting for a decision since June 24th when UGC decided to revisit the guidelines of OBE after a series of protests and twitter storms by students and DUTA. 

The court has noted that earlier, Delhi University had argued that they were prepared for the online exams and the mock exams were ready to make the students familiar to the one-time measure due to the pandemic. However, without informing the court even though a ruling was pending, they postponed the exams to July 10, one day before the ruling was scheduled.

After an unsuccessful mock trial of the examination, a renewed series of protests surfaced by students claiming that they received no support when encountered by problems during the mock. As the trend has been, if the exams are conducted in August-September, the results will not be announced at least till November or December, said advocate Manik Dogra, representing one of the students. Causa Legal, another firm appearing for the students, also pointed out that the Vice-Chancellor of DU has remained silent throughout this.

The MHRD meeting, convened by HRD minister Mr. Ramesh Pokhriyal, was the nail in the coffin for the patience of students already distressed by the former decisions. The HRD minister also tweeted ‘MHRD is committed to students’ health and quality education’, sparking another round of a twitter storm on Wednesday morning.

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