After writing a letter to the Chief Justice of Delhi High Court, now students have filed a petition in the court seeking directions to Delhi University to either withdraw from its 14th May notification or otherwise conduct offline examinations following the physical distancing norms to prevent the spread of Covid 19. With this, another measure has also been suggested to promote the final year students on the basis of marks obtained in previous years and internal assessment of the current academic year. The UGC guidelines amidst Covid 19 have earlier suggested this kind of measure for intermediate students of varsities if the situation is non-conducive to conduct examinations.
The petitioner students; Abhishek, Sharanjeet Kumar, and Deepak have asserted that this move of taking online examinations will favor well of students as, “well-off students” would have the support of “intelligent parents, friends, gadgets and search engines” during exams, whereas their poor counterparts would not have access to any of these. Their petition also stated that lack of proper internet connectivity and electricity would affect the performance of the poor students hailing from rural areas.
The petitioners are being represented by senior advocate J P Sengh and advocate Ayushi Chugh, who further claimed that there was no way to find out who was cheating when open book online exams are taking place. Justice Jayant Nath has further issued a notice to the university asking it to file a response to the plea by three students, belonging to economically weaker sections of the society, who have challenged that this form of the examination was beneficial only for those who are well off.
It is noteworthy here that, DU’s counsel has sought time to file a reply to this and the court has listed the matter for next hearing on June 18. The examinations are going to start from 1st July in OBE mode amidst Covid 19 pandemic as was indicated in the recently published date sheet by the varsity.
https://www.dutimes.com/du-date-sheet-open-book-exams-amidst-covid-19-pandemic/
