Less than half of the country’s universities say they are prepared to conduct final year examinations as directed by the University Grants Commission. The rest are undecided or yet to inform the UGC of their decision, ten days after the guidelines were issued , according to data from the regulator.
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“Universities were approached to inform the status of the conduct of examination,” the UGC said in a statement on Thursday. Out of 993 universities, 182 have informed the UGC that they have already conducted the examination, while another 272 plan to do so. Another 177 universities have informed the regulator that they are yet to decide on the conduct of the examination. There are no final year students in 27 private universities which were only established last year. The remaining universities are yet to respond.
At least five non-BJP State governments have announced that their universities will not conduct examinations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in defiance of the central regulatory agency’s guidelines. Only 251 out of 412 State universities have responded so far.
“After issuing the guidelines, we are now understanding the readiness, and status of implementation for examinations to be conducted by the end of September. The guidelines still stand,” UGC member secretary Rajnish Jain told The Hindu when asked why this kind of feedback had not been sought from universities before the guidelines were issued. Several State governments and universities have said they were not consulted before the decision was taken.
Dr. Jain declined to state how many State universities were in the undecided category, in comparison to central and private universities. “We are still in the process of collecting and compiling data from universities. The exercise is still going on. There is no deadline per se,” he said.
