JNTUH students protest against credit-based detention policy; officials say decision will be taken after results' announcement 

After the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University Hyderabad (JNTUH) issued a notice resuming the credit-based detention policy for the academic year 2021-22, even though the exams for the year have already been conducted, more than 400 students took out a protest today, October 10 on campus against the same from 11am to 12 pm. Students informed that around 70 protesters were arrested by the police as well.

"In today's protest both the topics i.e. Credit base detention and Subject exemption have been discussed. University requires some time to discuss and take the decision . Decision likely to be made till Saturday," stated JNTUH updates (@examupdt), a page that shares frequent updates regarding the university on Twitter.

The administration will announce their decision after considering the exam results of the second-semester exams of both second-year and third-year students, informed the Registrar of the University. “Once the results are out, we will get an exact number as to how many students are there on the detained list. Following this, we will accordingly discuss and form a committee to take a decision,” Dr M Manzoor Hussain, Registrar of JNTUH told EdexLive.

"Measure part of the existing norms"

The Registrar also said that the credit-based detention measure is part of the existing norms. “These are not new norms. The exemption was provided for one year due to COVID-19. In fact, benefits were given at all levels including exemptions for attendance and timings of the exam,” he said.  “If there are more students on the detained list, then the measure will be cancelled. Otherwise, they will go ahead with it,” claimed T Mukund Madhav, a fourth-year student at JNTUH. The same was informed to him by the administration of the University, he claimed. However, students are hoping that the measure would be dropped altogether, he said.

To recall, the notice which was issued on September 22 stated that the credit-based detention measure — wherein a student will only be promoted to the next academic year upon meeting the required credits in the present academic year failing which they have to repeat a year or take admission again — was not implemented during the session 2019-20 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the notice noted that since academic activities are now being conducted offline, it has been decided to implement the credit-based detention policy for the academic year 2021-22.

Students had earlier informed EdexLive that the announcement was sudden as they weren’t aware that such a measure would be taken.