On Wednesday, the DU (Delhi University) told the High Court that it has postponed the OBE till mid- August. This news has come only a day after DU claiming before the High Court that it was fully prepared to conduct the online examinations of final year students from July 10.
On Tuesday, a meeting was held between university officials, the human resource development ministry, and the University Grants Commission (UGC). After the meeting, the University submitted in the High Court that it has decided to postpone the online exams.
However, a dim view was taken by Justice Pratibha M Singh on the stand taken by DU. She said that the University should notice how they are playing with the lives of so many children. The Judge said that till Tuesday, DU had assured the court saying that it was all ready to conduct the online exams which were beginning from July 10.
Through Senior Advocate Sachin Dutta, the University had told the court that, during the mock tests, around 4.9 lakh question papers were downloaded, and 4.7 lakh were uploaded. This shows that the students were able in accessing and uploading the documents.
Justice Singh noted that the University was not fair with the court about its preparedness of holding the examinations online. She also said that in the Court, DU said that it was ready but the minutes of the meeting point in some other direction.
Justice Singh was hearing the pleas of several students who were seeking the quashing and withdrawal of the notifications of May 14 and 30 and June 27 for the final year students of undergraduate and postgraduate students. This was inclusive of the students of the School of Open Learning (SOL) and Non-Collegiate Women Education Board (NCWEB).
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The court observed that the decision taken by DU has created uncertainty among the students. The OBE has been postponed by the University for a second time.
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The UGC has made it clear that it has allowed all the Universities to conduct their examinations whenever convenient, but they should adhere to the deadline of September. Many students have also requested DU to mark the final year students on the basis of previous years’ or semester’s results.
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The case has been transferred to a division bench by Justice Singh. The division bench is hearing the petitions related to OBE.
Earlier, the High Court sought to know the preparedness of DU to conduct the examinations online. The university had told the Court that out of the 2.5 lakh final year students, 1.9 lakh students approximately were from Delhi and the rest from outside. The University had also claimed that owing to a robust platform, the examination portal was capable of catering to 80,000 students at a time. For each exam, the traffic on the portal will not be more than 22,000.
The Dean (Examinations) DU, had also submitted in the court that the evaluation of the answer scripts was more likely to begin from August and the results were expected to come out by the first week of October.