Putting an end to the confusion over the status of final-year exams, state minister for higher and technical education Uday Samant on Friday evening announced that chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, officials from the education department and state disaster management team in a meeting on Thursday decided not to hold the exams. However, examinations will be made optional for non-professional courses across all state universities, Samant said.
In a Facebook Live session held on Friday evening, Samant added that for professional courses, including law, engineering, architecture, pharmacy and hotel management, the state government has written to individual exam councils, including All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), Council of Architecture (CoA) and Bar Council of India (BCI), asking them to accept the promotion of students instead of holding exams.
“We had initially announced that the status of exams will depend on the Covid-19 situation and as the situation in Maharashtra continues to remain grim, we wrote to exam councils of all professional courses. The status will be decided based on their [central councils] responses,” said Samant.
Over the past few weeks, students and colleges repeatedly sought clarity over the status of allowed to keep term (ATKT)/backlog exams of final-year students. Samant announced that the Maharashtra government will decide on it in the next couple of days. “Once our appointed committee decides how ATKTs of final-year students can be handled, we will share the information. Individual universities can then decide how to implement it,” he said.
A total of 7.3 lakh students are part of non-professional courses across 14 state universities.
{{/usCountry}}A total of 7.3 lakh students are part of non-professional courses across 14 state universities.
{{/usCountry}}“All students from non-professional courses will give in writing to the university if they wish to give the examinations or not. Students who don’t wish to give exams will be promoted on the basis of their previous semester performance. We will release their results. We have also asked universities to schedule exams by following social distancing norms for those who wish to appear for exams,” said Samant.
On May 31, chief minister Uddhav Thackeray announced that state universities will not hold any exams for final-year students for academic year 2019-20. In his address to the state, Thackeray announced that with the lockdown extended till June 30, the state will have no choice but to promote final-year students based on their performance of the previous and current semester. However, a day later the Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari, who is the chancellor of all state universities, said such a decision will jeopardise the future of students.