JNTU (Jawaharlal Nehru Technical University) Hyderabad has decided to strictly comply with the norms of the AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education). But this is proving to be a bitter pill for the BTech students. The R18 (Regulation-18) batch of students states that they are facing a hard time because the university has denied them grace marks and subject exemption.
As a result of the varsity’s denial, many students have backlogs and are unable to join the jobs they qualified for in the campus placements. Some students also find it difficult to pursue higher studies abroad, a JNTU student, Dhanush, informed. Hiring companies require cleared backlogs and universities abroad require degree certifications, he says.
The students along with NSUI Telangana protested on August 22 asking for grace marks and exemptions so that they could clear their backlogs. However, the university cited the AICTE norms and said that subject exemption was not possible. As for grace marks, Dhanush says, “There is no clarity on the reason for denial.”
Here’s how Shahazan Khan, another JNTU student explains the situation, in his own words:
The R18 batch refers to the batch that took admission in 2018. Every time there is a change in the regulation in the policy, the batches get named accordingly. It happens that in 2018, AICTE brought out the regulation that a student has to earn 160 credits for earning a BTech degree.
Earlier, if a student was falling short of credits in a subject, he/she was allowed an exemption from it. So, if a student had backlogs in one to two subjects, they could opt for exemption and earn a BTech degree. This was very helpful for the students.
But now, with the new AICTE norms for 160 credits, the university is not allowing exemptions. Our VC said that they have already reduced the number of subjects, so no more exemption was possible. I understand if they strictly want to follow AICTE norms, but they should also consider the situation of the students.
It is only for one to two papers that students would now have to repeat a year if the university does not help. They have to wait for a few months before they can reappear for the backlog papers and again, there will be about a couple of months’ delay before the results are published. It will take six to seven months for a student to earn their degrees in this process. And it is as good as a year’s delay. Now companies will see this as a gap year.
The varsity is also not ready to give us grace marks so that students who are falling short of a few marks in a backlog can clear it. Before us, there was the R16 batch and they had received all these benefits. We did not know that we would not get them.
No solution then?
“We can only put out the request to the university,” says Shahazan.
“But it should consider our plight because we are the COVID-19 batch. We did not have proper classes. And we are not sure if the papers were checked in a proper manner. There could be errors. So grace marks should be awarded,” Dhanish said.
However, both the students agree that the varsity has remained firm on its decision and is in no mood to comply. Shahazan says that the benefits have stopped with their batch and juniors will also not receive them.
Meanwhile, Twitter has been buzzing with hashtags like #JntuhSubjectExemption and #JntuhSubjectExemption, plus Twitter handles like Jntuh Updates @examupdt trying to bring to light the plight of the students.
