Students who failed their undergraduate (UG) course subjects in the first year at Himachal Pradesh University (HPU) will now be given a chance to make up for it. On Tuesday, November 29, HPU allowed students who failed in BA, BSc and BCom first year to sit in the second year, but on a condition.
According to a notification issued by the HPU Registrar, such students would be allowed to take the second-year classes only after giving an undertaking that they agree to be demoted to the first year if they fail the re-evaluation. The move comes after several student bodies staged protests against the varsity's online evaluation system, as per a report by PTI.
What sparked the row?
Low pass percentage in all three courses in the first year across colleges affiliated to HPU has sparked a row in the state. After the students' protests, a five-member fact-finding committee was constituted to look into the matter with the HPU Pro Vice-Chancellor. "About 300 papers were re-checked randomly and it was found that all the papers were properly scanned and marked," said Dean of Studies Kulbhushan Chandel, who is also the chairman of the committee.
"The committee would check about 5,000 papers (50 papers of each subject from colleges where the pass percentage is less than 10 and the report would be submitted in ten days)," he added. JS Negi, Controller of Examination, HPU, informed that the overall results in the first year stood thus: 31 per cent for BSc, 57 per cent for BA and 58 per cent for BCom.
Student unions like ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad) and SFI (Students' Federation of India) alleged that a snag in the online system has resulted in a low pass percentage. On Tuesday, SFI embarked on a 24-hour symbolic strike on the university campus to protest against the alleged inaccuracy in the online evaluation system.
SFI Vice-President of the HPU campus unit, Harish, said that the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) online system was responsible for the "mess" as the entire evaluation work was given to a private company on contract and there was no supervision by regular staff members. He claimed that the results of about 80 per cent of students were lower than expected.
Meanwhile, ABVP President of the HPU unit, Ashish, said that the low pass percentage has caused mental stress for all first-year students. He added that the varsity officials would not be allowed to enter the university campus if the discrepancies in results are not removed in seven days, as per PTI.
Teachers opposed to online evaluation
Dr RL Sharma, General Secretary, Himachal Pradesh Government College Teachers' Association (HGCTA) informed that the teachers were not in support of the online system. "Teachers were opposed to online evaluation but the university authorities were adamant and went on with it despite problems and without imparting training to the teachers," he said.
He added that a majority of the teachers had not taken part in the online evaluation process. Sharma said further that even though the results were delayed by over two months, the evaluation was unsatisfactory as the pass percentage was now being questioned. "Moreover, secrecy is another issue. Earlier centres were created and two-tier spot evaluations were done," he stated.
However, a section of teachers are of the view that buckling under the pressure of students to allow them to sit for the second-year classes before a re-evaluation of the papers was completed does not augur well for the university and there should be no compromise on the quality of education. Over 42,000 students had appeared in the first-year UG examinations in May-June this year and the results were declared in November, as per PTI.
