On April 21, a month after the country went under lockdown, the JNU Students' Union wrote to the HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, stating the issues that the students of the university were facing. This was around the same time when universities across the country had started discussing the possibility of conducting classes online. The letter had stated that a large number of students, who were at their homes at that time do not have access to stable internet connections.
It noted that a lot of them come from poor families, disturbed homes and have no access to electricity. The union also asked the ministry to extend all the academic activities. Three months down the line, parts of the country are still under lockdown and the pandemic is yet to be contained. The JNUSU now claims that the university's administration is forcefully trying to implement online examinations and has raised their voice against this.
Condemning the move, JNUSU General Secretary Satish Yadav says, "The university has a lot of students who do not have access to gadgets or technologies to write exams online. We are now urging the administration to extend the deadlines and let the students write the examinations after they're back on campus." He also added that JNU can also follow the examples of universities like the University of Hyderabad and Pondicherry University, which called off online examinations. "They can alternatively mark the students based on their previous performances," he adds.
"The JNU administration is hell-bent upon implementing the online mode of examinations so as to end the Winter Semester 2020 and begin the Monsoon Semester. The JNUSU has already outlined the problem with the so-called dual-mode and the online examination mode itself. The cruelty can be gleaned from the fact that only a small section of students with access to internet services since the university closure which has been able to participate in online academic engagement," Aishe Ghosh, JNUSU President wrote on Facebook.
