New Delhi: For the longest time now, the final year students have been awaiting a concrete announcement regarding the exams. While states are rather stubborn about canceling final year exams 2020, the University Grants Commission (UGC), stated in its affidavit dated July 30, 2020, that the conducting of the final year exams is necessary and all institutions are bound to do so by September 2020. While the Supreme Court took to notice how UGC’s earlier guidelines don’t align with MHA’s guidelines, it was then highlighted that the latter was released on July 20 and the former on July 6.
However, as has been decided now, the Supreme Court will be hearing the case regarding UGC’s guidelines on August 10 and will be consulting the Ministry of Home Affairs regarding the issue as well. While the affidavits are to be submitted by August 7, the rejoinders are to be submitted by August 8, 2020, which means that the exams are not yet canceled and might happen if a decision isn’t made.
While UGC has clearly stated that those students who fail to appear for the exams that are being held right now can appear for the special set of exams that will be conducted later, the advocate for students felt that this might lead to chaos for the students.
The entire stance regarding the UGC guidelines has received a mixed reaction from universities, especially given the constant spike in the number of COVID-19 cases. While Maharashtra, among other states, said that it will not be conducting final year exams, the decision was challenged and ever since, UGC has been firm on conducting the exams since it feels that if not taken, the marks offered otherwise, will directly affect the quality of higher education in the country.
Meanwhile, at the hearing today, Justice Bhushan went on to say how time will be granted to the state once there is a reply filed by the State disaster management committee of Maharashtra.
The guidelines that were issued by UGC in April 2020, asked universities to conduct exams within August 2020, but on further reconsideration at the behest of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, the dates were revised and extended up to September 2020. However, ever since, the number of cases in India has been a growing concern, and hence, there are states like Maharashtra that are hell bent on not conducting the exams.
