Mumbai: Students of Mumbai University sat on a hunger strike on Wednesday afternoon at the Mumbai University’s Kalina campus outside Pariksha Bhavan to protest the inordinate delay in the declaration of 11,000 law examination results.
The hunger strike by about 10 students lasted nearly two hours before Deputy Registrar at the university’s special cell, Dinesh Kamble, walked up to Amey Malshe, a first-year law student who was leading the protesters, with a glass of water and verbally assured him of declaring the results within the next five to six days.
Mr. Kamble spoke to the gathered students, many of whom had been given a zero after their papers came back from revaluation. The Deputy Registrar also promised to look into the matter and assured that all the results would be out before Diwali. However, no written communication was given to the students.
“If we do not get the results within the time promised to us, we will start a hunger strike again,” said Mr. Malshe, who is yet to receive his second-semester results.
An aggrieved TYBcom student, who accosted the Deputy Registrar, said it would be better to unite as students belonging to one university and not protest as people from different colleges and streams. The students complained that the university was not committing to one date. “Admissions to MSc is not taking place since students do not have their marksheets with them yet. In the case of TYBcom students many have been failed as per their marksheets, while other results have been held as reserved,” students said.
Agitated by the vague promises and shifitng of deadlines, the students have held the University responsible for their predicament as most of them have lost an entire year because of the new online assessment system entirely gone wrong.
Sachin Pawar, president, Students Law Council, a city-based student group said that results post re-evaluation were very disappointing. “The university doesn’t seem to have learned any lesson. The students have run out of options,” Mr. Pawar said. According to university sources, 53,354 applications for re-evaluation had been received, of which around 15,000 answer sheets had been assessed.
