Degree results delayed: College students, teachers protest against MU

Mumbai city news: This year, the MU adopted an on-screen marking process for assessment, in place of the traditional pen-and-paper evaluation

A group 50 students and teachers on Monday staged protested at the University of Mumbai’s (MU’s) campus,Fort, against the delay in declaring degree college results.

The Bombay University and College Teachers’ Union (BUCTU) will protest the university’s failure in assessing answer papers and declaring results within 45 days of examination as required by the law. (File)

The protesters, led by Bombay University and College Teachers’ Union (BUCTU), criticised the varsity’s failure in assessing papers and declaring results within 45 days of examination — as required by the law. They also voiced opposition to what they termed as ‘extreme harassment of examiners’ by issuing ‘ threatening’ letters to them.

This year, the MU adopted an on-screen marking process for assessing answersheets against the traditional pen-and-paper evaluation. The decision caused a delay in declaring results, as the MU could not appoint an agency to conduct on-screen marking for a long time. Even after the process began, the technical glitches in the system slowed down the pace of assessment.

After Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao, who also serves as chancellor of the public universities in the state, took cognisance of the issue and asked the MU to declare results by July 30, the university tried to speed up the process. Letters were issued to more than 1,000 teachers, who didn’t show up to assess papers, warning them of the consequences of skipping the assessment work.

“It’s not the teachers, but the university which is at fault here. We do report to Centralised Assessment Programmes (CAP) centres, but often there are no papers available for assessment on the server. Many of us are yet to be allotted CAP centres,” said Balasaheb Salve, a teacher from BNN College, Bhiwandi, and a member of BUCTU.

The protestors have suggested that delaying the results amounts to blocking job and higher education opportunities to the students. They will demand increasing the capacity of OSM, while advocating yet stronger intervention by the chancellor.