The shocking number of failures in the Sociology paper is a manifestation of the complete breakdown of the examination system that has been under severe stress ever since the introduction of the semester system and chaotic functioning of the university administration. While the largest number of failures reported is in the Sociology paper, there are hundreds of similar examples from other courses, where students doing brilliantly in all other papers have failed in one paper, despite an excellent internal assessment.
The DUTA demands that the University take immediate steps to recheck these papers and re-assign marks. Pending that, to save the careers of affected students, the University must declare as passed all candidates who have obtained an aggregate of 40%.This was the system followed by the University for decades prior to the introduction of the semester system. DUTA has been demanding restoration of this provision since last year, when similar discrepancies in marking had affected thousands of students’ careers. An item purporting to bring about this amendment was approved in the meeting of the Executive Council on 28th May, 2015. However, it had a flawed formulation, since it laid down an aggregate of 40% only for promotion from one year to the next(along with passing in 50% of the papers!), and not for the purpose of getting a degree, for which a pass in the every paper (external part as well as the total) was required. This defeated the very purpose of the amendment and gave no relief to students. In fact, the contradictory provisions for being promoted from one year to the next, has made even that more difficult The DUTA demands that the amendment be formulated and interpreted logically and in the correct spirit, which was to give students relief and not penalise them further. This amended formulation should be implemented forthwith, not only for the current batch, but also for the previous batch.
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