DUTA Letter to MHRD, 25 June 2015

25 June 2015

Sub: Seeking deferment of Choice-Based Credit System (CBCS)
to prevent illegalities and chaos

We write to draw your urgent attention to the fact that admissions to the undergraduate programmes have begun in the University of Delhi from today, 25 June 2015. While the Vice Chancellor informed members of the Executive Council at its meeting held on 28 May that the CBCS would be implemented in the University from the academic session 2015-16, no mention of the CBCS has been provided for the students seeking admission to the University either in the Information Handout or the online Information Bulletin or in any other form. Moreover, the course structure and syllabi under CBCS have still not been brought before the Academic Council and the Executive Council. As per Section 7(4) of the Delhi University Act “The Courses and curricula shall be prescribed by the Ordinances and, subject thereto, by the Regulations.” This means that the only courses which exist as on date are the courses to which students were admitted last academic year (2014-15). Therefore, the batch of students taking admission from today can only be given admission to the existing courses. Students who have taken admission today have filled the College admission forms as per the existing course-curriculum. 

Please recall that a decisive argument made at the time of rollback of FYUP was that the University had not sent the relevant amended ordinances to the Visitor for his approval. With regard to CBCS, the relevant amendments to the ordinances have still not been made. What was not acceptable yesterday surely cannot become acceptable today.

We have repeatedly tried to draw your attention, and that of the UGC, to the hurried manner in which the CBCS is being introduced following the directives from your Ministry and from the UGC. The Vice-Chancellor has made it clear that the decision to implement CBCS from this year itself is in consequence of these directives. As a result, statutory processes have been given the go by and discussion disallowed to an extent that even exceeds what happened with FYUP. The inordinate hurry is further illustrated by the fact that no time whatsoever has been given to even  consider the UGC’s recent announcement, increasing the variation allowed in syllabi from 20% to 30%. 

In view of the above, we urge your immediate intervention so that implementation of CBCS is deferred. Otherwise the thousands of students taking admission to the University this year will be subjected to far greater illegalities and chaos than the ones from which students of the FYUP batch were rescued last year.