Students forced to write exams in lawns as DU colleges face serious space crunch

Various colleges of Delhi University have no rooms to accommodate students and have arranged seats in the open to conduct the semester examinations. According to students, normally several of them are bound to attend the classes while standing and even have to sit in corridors or lawns in order to take the exams, despite high degree of absenteeism.

Simran Deep, a fresher student of Sri Aurobindo College, said: “Sometimes corridors and the lawns are teeming with students because there is no place to sit.”

“It is during the exams when colleges face the heat of getting all the students seated in exam halls and it creates a lot of trouble for us. This year was no less when colleges tried numerous ways to accommodate all the excess students in the exam,” he added.

Complaints like these have found their outlet in some social networking sites. Even though teachers and students who were facing the problem have lodged a formal complaint with the university administration but no action has been taken, the students stated.

Irritated with the race everyday before the exam in order to grab a place to sit, Mayank Saini, another student from the same college stated: “Lack of basic amenities is a far cry across all the Delhi University colleges.”

“In a classroom of 50 there are more than 80 students,” said Sonal Mehta, who is pursuing her B A programme from Motilal Nehru College. “In a lot of cases, clashing of the exam timings of evening and the morning colleges create a chaotic scenario,” Mehta added.

Stating the lack of basic amenities available in her college, she said: “During the exam, the college had to put up a tent which was used as a temporary examination hall.”

While talking on the matter, Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA), president, Nandita Narayan said: “Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD) have been lambasting us for not coming on the index of word’s top two hundred colleges without even granting us enough budget to meet the basic infrastructure.”