Kolkata: The state Higher Education department has written to the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) urging it to re-examine its latest guidelines about mandatorily holding terminal semester examinations in educational institutions by September 2020.
The state has further requested the ministry to allow it to implement its own decision about conducting final semester examinations to ensure the interest of the students and not to make University Grants Commission (UGC) guidelines mandatory.
The state government on June 27 had brought out an advisory for the state universities to consider giving 80 percent weightage on the basis of the best aggregate percentage obtained by a candidate and 20 per cent on internal assessment.
Most of the universities in the state have already finalised their modalities of holding terminal semester examinations based on the advisory of the state government.
The letter addressed to Amit Khare, Department of Higher Education, MHRD by state Principal Secretary Higher Education Manish Jain states that such 'compulsory' guidelines "…is only against the spirit of the federal structure enshrined in the Constitution of India as
Education is placed in the concurrent list and the state was never consulted by the UGC despite sending a request for consultation with respect to framing of such guidelines…."
The department in its letter has also raised doubts about whether situations will be conducive for holding off line examinations in the month of September amidst the rising cases of COVID affected people across the country.
It has also questioned the digital access in the country in reaching out to students in remote parts of the country through online mode for holding examinations.
The letter has also pointed out that holding examinations by 30 September 2020 will not only delay the results of such examinations but will be detrimental to the career and cause financial distress to many students who are dependent upon securing a job in order to sustain themselves and their families.
The results of B.Com Semester V (Honours and General) Examination 2019 under CBCS of Calcutta University will be published on Friday. The results will be available at the two websites www.wbresults.nic.im and www.exametc.com.