The Odisha government on Wednesday requested the University Grants Commission (UGC) to extend the deadline of the final year university exams for all undergraduate and postgraduate courses from September 30 toOctober 10. On behalf of the Chief Minister and Chairman of the State Disaster Management Authority Naveen Patnaik, Higher Education department secretary Saswat Mishra wrote a letter to the UGC mentioning that the extension of the deadline will ensure scheduling of the exams with at least one day gap so that the test centres can be sanitised properly.
"Preparedness to conduct the examinations was discussed with university vice-chancellors and principals of autonomous colleges on 31.08.2020 through video-conferencing. "All of them are of the view that since they had earlier not planned to conduct final semester/year UG and PG examinations, about 25 days time would be required to make necessary preparation for conducting the examinations," the letter written to the UGC secretary mentioned.
Therefore the conduct of the examinations can commence from September 20, it said. "Secondly, since there will be multiple examinations (subject-wise and paper-wise), three to four examinations needto be slotted on all days, till 30.09.2020, so as to complete the examinations by 30.09.2020," the letter said.
Conducting multiple examinations on a single day would lead to congregation of a large number of students in examination centres which will make compliance of COVID-19 prevention protocol difficult, it said. "Conducting examinations every day, without any gap, will also lead to universities and colleges not getting enough time to sanitise and disinfect the examination centres before the next day of examination.
"All vice-chancellors and principals, therefore, requested for extension of the 30.09.2020 deadline by 10 days, i.e. up to 10.10.2020," it said. The Supreme Court had recently ordered that states and universities cannot promote students without holding final year university examinations by September 30.
However, the Court gave states the discretion to approach the UGC for an extension of the deadline by which final year exams should be completed.
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