Bhubaneswar: Odisha Higher Education Minister Arun Kumar Sahoo on Thursday drafted a letter to Union Human Resource Development Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal reiterating the request of the State Government not to make the revised guidelines of the MHRD/UGC mandatory on the State Public Universities of Odisha.
Sahoo stated that due to the non-receipt of any response or clarification from the Ministry, the State Government and the State Public Universities are in a dilemma regarding the conduct of final and UG and PG term examinations.
Students and parents have become very anxious and restless due to such uncertainty and are contacting the Higher Education Department in large numbers over the telephone as to whether they should start preparing for the examinations or not, he added.
“The Covid-19 situation in the country has worsened in the last 15 days since I wrote to you on 09.07.2020. The situation is most likely to aggravate further in the coming months,” stated Sahoo while listing the following reasons under which it is neither possible nor advisable to conduct UG and PG final year/semester examinations in the State as per the revised MHRD/UGC guidelines dates July 6, 2020.
- The number of UG & PG final semester/year students in Odisha is about 2 lakhs. Most of them belong to low and middle income group and do not have desktop or laptop or decent smart phone at home. Most of them also stay in rural areas not having reliable internet connection. Therefore, conducting on-line examination for such a large number of students is simply not possible.
- Conducting physical examination will expose the students, the college staff and their family members to the risk of Covid-19.
- As public transportation is now virtually non-existent, it is not possible on the part of the students to come to their college.
- For hostellers, it will be a herculean task to accommodate them in hostels maintaining all the Covid-19 protocols.
- As the hostel accommodation is limited, many students used to stay in private rented hostels/houses around colleges. As colleges were closed down since 24th March 2020, all of them have gone back to their native places. The house owners will now not allow the students to come and stay in their houses/hostels considering the Covid-19 risk.
- A number of colleges are presently being used by District Administrations for Quarantine Centre, Covid Care Home, Covid Care Centre, Covid Care Hospital, etc. Students coming to these colleges for writing examination will be exposed to the Covid-19 risk.
- Conduct of examination in September 2020, as advised by UGC, will get further delayed as the COVID-19 situation is worsening in India. In that case, the academic calendar will go off the rail completely jeopardizing the future career of lakhs of students.
- If the alternative evaluation system can be accepted for intermediate year/semester students, it should also be accepted for final semester/year students. Students not happy with the alternative evaluation system (the number will be very less) will anyway get a chance to appear in physical examination to be conducted in November/December once the Covid-19 situation improves. Through the alternative evaluation system, the final semester/year result can be published by 31 August 2020 which will not derail the academic calendar at all.
Sahoo once again requested Pokhriyal to reconsider the matter and allow the State Public Universities of Odisha to adopt the alternative evaluation guidelines issued by the State Government on June 18 this year instead of conducting examinations as per the revised guidelines of the MHRD/UGC.
