Mumbai: As the end-semester exams inch close, Mumbai University (MU) has erroneously allotted a total of 2000 students to an exam centre in Goregaon’s Jashbhai Maganbhai Patel College of Commerce which has the capacity to accommodate only 300 students. Administered by the university, sixth-semester third-year (TY) B.Com examinations are to commence at the centre on Wednesday, April 5, 2023.
The J.M Patel College, which is affiliated to MU, hosts end-semester examinations for third-year students every year. The college has the capacity to accommodate as many as 240 students since there are only two TY B.Com classrooms within the institute, despite which MU has been allotting an excessive number of students to the college over the past few years.
“The university kept sending 300 to 350 students our way and two students had to be seated on one bench to make up for the space crunch. Hosting 2,000 students is out of the question,” said a senior professor on the condition of anonymity.
J.M. Patel College has been assigned a large number of students for papers like Accounts, Finance, and Human Resource Management, while the number allotted is comparatively less for subjects like Computer Sciences. “Students have to appear for a total of six TY B.Com papers. The population of students varies depending on the number of repeaters and backlogs for a given subject,” explained the professor.
In the last-minute rush to fix the mix-up, Mumbai University officials have promised to correct admit cards of 1700 students within the next few days. Talking to The FPJ, a spokesperson from the University of Mumbai said that all extra students will be reassigned centres before the exams commence.
“The admit cards released by the university were provisional. We will amend admit cards for all those students whose exam centres have been changed.”
Earlier this month, the university released over 2 lakh admit cards for students who were to appear for their end-semester exams between March and May 2023. The admit cards were uploaded online on the official Mumbai University website.
“Releasing provisional admit cards with no date, no timetable, and no fixed exam centre is of no benefit to the students, even if it is released two months before the exam,” said Pradeep Sawant from Yuvasena.
