Professors' association moves SC challenging UGC guidelines

Kolkata: The West Bengal College & University Professors' Association (WBCUPA) has moved Supreme Court challenging the July 6 guidelines of University Grants Commission (UGC) that final semester examinations for students will be mandatory and should be held by end of September 2020.

The matter is expected to be heard on July 31. "Our Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee

has already written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to do the needful so that the UGC guidelines are withdrawn in the current Covid pandemic situation," said Krishnakali Basu, President of WBCUPA.

"However, there has been no response as yet. So we decided to move the Apex Court," added the President of WBCUPA. The state government had issued advisory for colleges and universities in the last week of June to give 80 per cent weightage on the basis of best aggregate percentage obtained by a candidate in any of the previous semester and 20 percent on internal assessment during the current semester for assessing the students in their terminal semesters.

The advisory was based on the April 29 UGC guidelines where terminal examinations were not made mandatory.

"When the April 29 guidelines were issued the number of COVID positive cases across the country was around 32,000.When the July 6 guidelines came up the number of Covid cases had witnessed a steep rise and the increasing trend is still on," said a senior official of WBCUPA

"The students will be in a great risk of getting infected by the virus if the examinations are made mandatory," added the senior official of West Bengal College & University Professors' Association.