Regular year exams for the students of Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) were cancelled last year due to the pandemic and subsequent lockdown. Now, with the exam season drawing near, SPPU students are demanding online exams citing COVID-19 scare, reported The Indian Express.
Meanwhile, as per the new report, SPPU administration is likely to consider the demand of students for conducting online exams, considering the huge strength and the time that will be needed to conduct the offline exams fo all the students.
As per the report, the SPPU gave the following analysis over the debate of online vs offline exams:
The university, if decides to hold the exam offline for first to final year students including backlog papers, will take more than 72 days.
While if it conducts the exam in online mode, it will take just 40 days.
The huge task of paper correction will also get easy if the exam is conducted online.
It is to be noted that, recently the Minister for Higher and Technical Education Uday Samant had also said universities can conduct exams online as well as offline as per the COVID-19-related situation in their respective areas.
However, SPPU's exam department is yet to take a decision on the dates and mode of the exams.
Now, the decision will be taken in the meeting which is slated to be held on this Tuesday.
Universities have been directed not to force students to pay full fees, and a committee is looking into students' fee-related grievances, Samant said.
"If a college is found violating government norms, it will face legal action," he added.
Samant had also said that while colleges can reopen from 15 February, all hostels may not as some of them are being used as quarantine centres.
(With inputs from PTI)
