Examinations for all Maharashtra courses were held online for the last two years due to the Covid-19 outbreak. The Department of Higher and Technical Education and universities have chosen to conduct examinations for vocational and non-vocational programmes offline now that the situation has been stabilised.
Students are already worried enough about balancing their studies and taking exams in person. Students are becoming increasingly concerned about taking offline exams. Many students claim that MCQ (Multiple Choice Question) exams were held for two years, and the same writing practice is required. "Though our exam is for two and a half hours, I am not sure whether I will be able to complete my paper within the allocated time because we don't have a practice writing exam," said Divya Dhullla, a first-year student from Mumbai.
"The online exam was all we had for the previous two years," she added.
Students who are going to appear for online exams, like those who are having offline exams, believe that the allotted time is insufficient. Bhumika Mota, a third-year student from a Mumbai University affiliated college, said, "Even though our exam is online, we do not have enough time. How will we be able to appear subjects like accounting in under an hour?"
Therefore, a letter was written by Yuvasena to Uday Samant, the Minister of Higher Education and Technical Education, Maharashtra, requesting that the exam period be increased from half an hour to one hour so that the students can finish the work on time and avoid any academic penalties.
"Students writing practice is hampered due to last two year online MCQ exam paper pattern, and many students have approached us for the same problem, so we have requested the Higher Education Minister to kindly extend the exam paper time for students' convenience, which is very genuine," said Mr Sainath Durge, a BMC Education Committee member and a Yuvasena core committee member.
