DU final-year open-book exams from Aug 10 to 31

New Delhi: The Delhi University will conduct its final year open book examination between August 10 and 31, the timeline suggested by the Delhi High Court after

New Delhi: The Delhi University will conduct its final year open book examination between August 10 and 31, the timeline suggested by the Delhi High Court after the varsity submitted a date sheet for holding the exam.

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In an affidavit submitted on Tuesday, the university said it has decided to start the open book examination from August 17 and conclude the process by September 8. It had also said that the date sheets for the undergraduate courses has been finalised and those for the postgraduate courses will be declared before July 20.

The high court is hearing a bunch of pleas by several students which had challenged the decision of the university to conduct the open book examination, stating that students do not have ample resources to appear in the exam.

Responding to the DU affidavit, a bench of justices Hima Kohli and Subramonium Prasad said, “You were so confident about the conduct of exams. Now you have pushed it to mid-August. Why are you starting in August and why not July. When you were already prepared then why are you not conducting the exams now”?

The bench said that the exams should be “compressed” and the declaration of results should be done at the earliest. It said that it was about the future of 2.7 lakh students and they cannot be made to wait till November 30. It asked Vinay Gupta, Dean of Examination, about the feasibility of changing the schedule.

The court proposed that the first set of mock test should start from July 27 instead of July 31 and the second set of mock test should be conducted from August 1 instead of August 4. Gupta agreed to the changes while also agreeing that the online examination will be conducted from August 10 instead of August 18. He also agreed to concluding the exam by Aug 31, as proposed by the court, instead of September 8.

The university, however, has not issued a fresh notification yet.

The court asked the varsity to give a timeline for the conduct of the physical exams while also indicating the timeline for the declaration of the results of the online open book exams. The matter would be now heard on July 22.

Earlier, explaining the challenges in the conduct of exams, DU’s counsel Sachin Datta told the court that there are certain problems such as data entry. He said that due to a large number of students, a lot of data has to be put online after the exams. He said that the students would be given additional time till July 22 to fill the forms.

He also submitted that colleges and students would be able to access the exam portal created on the DU website to check their data like name, date of birth and other information. He said if they wanted to change or correct any data entry, the students will have to ask the college concerned.

To a specific query from the court, Datta said that the physical and blended mode exams would be conducted two weeks after the open book papers.

Students and teachers, however, persisted with their demand for cancellation of the examination. DU Executive Council member Rajesh Jha, who teaches at Rajdhani College, said, “Despite experiencing chaos, glitches, and crashes during previous mock tests and even leakage of personal data of students, the university has decided to go ahead with online open book exams. Students and teachers are opposed to online exams since it is anti-student and anti-social justice.”

Students said the changes have only added to the uncertainty around the final-year exams. “The ongoing court cases were our last hope, now that the issue has become highly political. However, today’s hearing has disappointed all of us because shifting the exams earlier by mere 6-7 days does not solve any of our problems. We expected the court to direct DU to resort to alternative measures which are less discriminatory and far more justifiable in nature,” said Naman Biyani, a final-year student at the university.

While the university has suggested students to use common service centres in their localities to write online exams in case they do not have the internet facility at home, the students have maintained that those who live in remote areas were at a disadvantage since there might not be electricity and internet connections in their localities.

(With inputs from Kainat Sarfaraz)