Student delegates from the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University Hyderabad (JNTUH) met with Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan, the Governor of Telangana today, September 12, regarding the grace marks issue in the university.
In this meeting, the delegation made her cognizant of the JNTUH administration’s decision to withdraw 30 grace marks for the R18 batch, as well as the students’ demand to introduce them again for the batch of 2023.
In the request submitted to the governor during the meeting, the students say that last year, the administration of JNTUH increased the grace marks from 15 to 30 for the batch of 2022, due to the pandemic.
This notification came after the university did away with grace marks for this batch, which sparked a series of protests from the students. Finally, after the governor’s interference, the JNTUH announced that it would double the grace marks.
However, this notification was withdrawn in January 2023 without prior notice, thus leaving the batch of 2023 unable to leverage this provision. The students write that when the increase was announced in 2022, they thought that it would last till the completion of their course; a few students even received their degree with grace marks, while those with more backlogs applied to appear in the supplementary exams, thinking that they were eligible. During that period, they say, the university suddenly withdrew the notification.
Since then, the students of the 2023 batch have been demanding that the grace mark be restored for them as well, as they were also affected by the pandemic.
The students, in the letter, further urged the governor to support them like she did last time, and requested a meeting with her to talk about this issue at length.
Students share woes
“Prior to this, we spoke to several authorities, including the Registrar of JNTUH, but to no avail,” says Shahnaz Khan, the admin of JNTUH Updates (@examupdt) on X. (formerly Twitter).
Mohammed Nehaal Ur Rahman, one of the students present at the meeting with the governor, said that even meeting the governor took a lot of effort and requests. “We could only meet the governor after sending over 200 emails to the governor’s office. Each time we sent them, they were redirected to the Dean’s office,” he claimed.
The support they had
The students were finally able to meet the governor with the help of the Defence Ex-Servicemen & Families Welfare Voluntary Society.
Addressing the governor, the President of the society, Gopu Ramana Reddy, (Retd) Army JCO, wrote that the wards of some ex-servicepersons are being affected by the withdrawal of grace marks, and urged her to provide the students with her “guidance and support”, as it “will undoubtedly make a significant impact on the lives of countless young individuals striving for a better future”.
According to Nehaal, the students explained the problems they were facing because of the withdrawal to the governor in great detail. “We told her that some of us even had job offer letters in hand, but were unable to join due to backlogs,” he added. They also mentioned the recent suicide of a student on campus, as he had no chance of clearing his backlogs.
“We told her that while we were responsible for having backlogs, we needed her support to urge the university to introduce the grace marks as that would give us a chance to clear them all within a year,” Nehaal continued.
The governor’s response was fairly positive, said Nehaal. “She told us that she was aware of this issue, but did not know that it was this deep. She was saddened by how badly the withdrawal of the grace marks affected the students,” he further said.
The governor assured the students that she would take the issue up with the JNTU Hyderabad administration at the earliest, he added.
