Around 50 aggrieved students from the School of Law at Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), Bengaluru face dismissal as they missed the July 31 deadline for paying the readmit fee of ₹1,45,500 lakh. The students and their parents had protested to get the re-admission deadline pushed after they had a window of just two days over the weekend.
Earlier, the students had received the notification of readmission 10 days before the July 31 deadline. The students had just two days until the deadline to submit their work after receiving their retest results on July 28, which fell on a weekend.
Director refused to extend the deadline
After a full day of protest authorities were forced to address the students, who also have their parents by their side. According to a student from the protest, Campus Director Dr Narayani Ramachandran said, "We had a meeting with the Mumbai campus, where they denied pushing the re-admission deadline and conducting a special re-examination."
The 'Mumbai campus' is NMIMS Mumbai, their flagship branch which reportedly takes all the decisions which are binding on all the allied institutes.
Exam, re-exam conundrum
While the students were not given any clarity as to why they failed their first attempt examinations, they were also given only nine days to prepare for retest which they eventually failed again. Their answer sheets are reportedly clean with only green ticks, yet they have been declared failed. On demanding an explanation, the students were asked to write to the evaluators at NMIMS who are said to be anonymous. The students were left clueless.
Dr Ramachandran also reportedly is said to have told the protesting students, "NMIMS doesn't have any policy where the faculties have to explain the students' mistakes in answers and grounds of marks deduction."
With no ATKT, they had a 'special exam'
As a deemed university, NMIMS does not follow the ATKT system. However post the pandemic, they witnessed a drop in academic performance. A 'special examination' in May this year was conducted on a temporary basis to clear backlogs as per an email to the students by Ashish Apte, Controller of Examination.
On requesting the same be implemented again, a student from the School of Law was allegedly told, the request for special re-examination and pushing of dates were refused on the ground that the guidance from the faculty on mark reduction was sought through personal communication with the faculty concerned and not in writing.
The Free Press Journal approached the institution to seek clarification over the allegations, the response is awaited.
