Lawyer Saket Shubham had a rather busy morning. In a span of 24 hours, his inbox had at least 300 emails from students of the University of Delhi. In a rush, Shubham had rummaged through his inbox and managed to open and read around 150 of them. From them, he had managed to collect circulars from around 17 universities from all across the country that either announces the cancellation of their exams or talks about how they are resorting to alternate modes of evaluation.
Shubham is one of the lawyers who represents a few students of the University of Delhi in their petition in the Delhi High Court against the university's decision to conduct online Open Book Examinations. While the exams are supposed to begin on August 10, the next hearing is on August 4.
Now, why was Shubham's inbox flooded, you may wonder. His older brother and colleague Akash Sinha, who is also fighting the same case on Sunday had tweeted asking DU students to reach out to their friends from other universities who've completed their exams and seek circulars wherein they've resorted to assignment based evaluation, 24 hours or longer timed exams, MCQ based or presentation/viva based exams. Incidentally, he had tweeted this on Friendship Day. It had since gone viral. "It will help us establish discrimination by DU against students in a robust manner. Wishing all of you a Happy Friendship Day. Stay strong and keep your friends positive and strong," Sinha tweeted.
"The UGC guidelines were issued only after we filed the petition in the Delhi High Court. We are fine with any other modes of examinations. But online exams are highly discriminatory," says Shubham. "Since UGC had suggested time-bound assignments, they can also go for 24-hour assignments like JNU had. A lot of universities have considered past assignments as examinations and have declared their results. We want to show this to the court," he adds.
He also explains an incident that took place in BHU recently to support his case. "BHU had recently assessed two students from Fiji on the basis of their past assessments after the Fiji government had requested them. We have a copy of that mark sheet," he says. Shubham adds that DU is yet to file a counter-affidavit. "If they do it, we will immediately file a rejoinder," he adds.
