Cancelled arrears as students were in distress: Govt to HC

Cancelled arrears as students were in distress: Govt to HC

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Chennai:  22.11.2020 

Justifying its stand in cancelling arrear exams in view of the pandemic, the Tamil Nadu government has informed the Madras high court that the decision was made only to alleviate distress faced by the student community due to Covid-19.

It was done to skilfully navigate the course to ensure safety and wellbeing of the students, the state department of higher education said in its affidavit.

Denying the argument that such an order would amount to discrimination among students, the department said, “The decision would not demoralise meritorious students as only moderated minimum pass mark is awarded to arrear students.”

The submissions were made by M Ilango Henry Dass, joint secretary of the department, in response to a batch of pleas moved by former Anna University vice-chancellor E Balaguruswamy and others challenging the cancellation.

“As this situation was unprecedented, students had left their belongings, textbooks, notebooks and laptops in their hostel. Therefore, they had no access to their study material,” the department said. The inaccessibility to college was further compounded when the campuses were used to provide relief material to guest workers and later as Covid quarantine centres, the joint secretary said.

He added that as per the guidelines of the UGC, the state constituted a committee to work out the modalities and adopt the UGC guidelines. The decision to cancel the exams were taken only based on the recommendation of the committee.

Asserting that the GO was not in violation of UGC guidelines, the department said, “UGC guidelines specifically stated that the guidelines are advisory in nature and each university may chart out its own plan of action taking into consideration the issues pertaining to the pandemic, as its degree of impact varies from region to region.” Therefore, the TN government consulted state universities since conducting exams and evaluation of students is in the exclusive domain of the university concerned and the GO was issued, the department said.

“The state government will not lower the education standard of the students and the universities. In the absence of any specific guidelines about arrear papers, the state extended the exemption granted to regular students to arrear students as well to ensure no discrimination,” the department said.

State higher education department further added that the decision wouldn’t demoralise meritorious students as those who had pending arrears were given mere pass marks