More than 400 universities have already held final exams or will do so, says UGC

The UGC issued a statement on the status of final exams after seeking responses from central, state and private universities.

NSUI members protest after MHA permitted university exams to be conducted, in New Delhi on 7 July 2020 | Manvender Vashist | PTI

New Delhi: The University Grants Commission (UGC) Thursday said more than 400 universities had either conducted their final examinations or were planning to do so in offline/online mode.

Citing data put together from responses universities sent in, the UGC issued a statement saying: “Out of the 640 universities that submitted their response to UGC — 182 have already conducted examination (on-line/off-line), 234 are planning to conduct examination (on-line/off-line/blended mode) in August/September and 38 are planning to conduct examination as per the directions of the relevant Statutory Council.”

It added that 177 universities were yet to decide on the conduct of examination.

In the case of 27 private universities, which were established from 2019-20 till date, the first batch is yet to become eligible for final examination, the statement added.

The statement comes amid a raging debate over whether final examinations should be conducted or not given the current Covid-19 crisis.

The UGC had issued revised guidelines on 16 July, making it mandatory for all universities, including state, to conduct the final exams by September-end.

Earlier this week, the Delhi High Court asked the Centre, UGC and Delhi University to reply to a plea challenging the guidelines. It was hearing a plea filed by Delhi University student Kabir Sachdeva.

The UGC’s move evoked criticism from students and teachers across the country and also put the states that had cancelled final year exams in a fix.

A number of states, including Maharashtra, Haryana and Punjab, had already cancelled exams before the UGC guidelines were issued.

The commission then sought responses from all universities — central, state and private — for their status on conducting the exams.

As of 15 July, 640 universities (including 120 Deemed Universities, 229 Private Universities, 40 Central Universities and 251 State Universities) responded to the commission and of them, 454 universities have either conducted exams or are planning to do so, in online/offline/blended mode.

According to UGC’s data, there are 954 universities in the country, however, UGC received responses from only 640 universities as of July 15.