SOL students in the lurch after gaffe by invigilators

For nearly 300 students of Delhi University’s School of Open Learning (SOL), wrong instructions from officials of an examination centre has spelt disaster. Shaswati Das reports.

For nearly 300 students of Delhi University’s School of Open Learning (SOL), wrong instructions from officials of an examination centre has spelt disaster.

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First-year students of BCom (Programme), who appeared for the accountancy exam on Tuesday at Ramanujan College, were told categorically by the centre authorities to abstain from using calculators during the exam - a move that resulted in students leaving out large sections of the paper.

“BCom students are all permitted to use calculators during the course of the accountancy exam. But we were told by the invigilators that the university did not permit it. Because of this, we ended up doing only half the paper since the calculations were extremely tedious,” said Prabhjot Singh, who appeared for the exam at Ramanujan College (formerly Deshbandhu College).

Students who appeared for the same exam at other centres, however, said they were not given any such instruction.

While students claimed that they had approached authorities at the SOL to request them to probe the matter, SOL’s executive director HC Pokhriyal maintained that the institute had no knowledge of the incident and any complaint would need to be filed with the university’s examination branch.

While DU’s examination branch said the matter would be looked into, it confirmed that no query had been made by the invigilating officials at Ramanujan College.

“We received several enquiries from different examination centres on whether students could use calculators during the exam. Every student is allowed to do so. We do not know why this miscommunication happened only with Ramanujan College. We will look into the matter,” said a DU official from the examination branch.