Delhi University agreed to start the online Open Book Examination for final year students from August 10 and finish it by August 31.
Delhi University (DU) said that an additional opportunity is also being given to final year students to register for the examination by July 25.The statement was made by the University’s Dean of Examination, Prof Vinay Gupta, before a Division Bench of Justices Hima Kohli and Subramonium Prasad.
Prof Gupta said that the mock examination for students will be conducted in two phases starting July 27 and August 1. In the first phase, the students can familiarise themselves with the uploading and downloading of documents, and the second phase will offer a real-time test, he said.
The timeline was agreed upon after the Court asked Delhi Univeristy to advance the examination schedule proposed by it in an affidavit. As per the proposal, the examination was to begin from August 17 and would go on till September 8. The proposed date of declaration of result was November 30.
As far as the issues of conduct of the second round of examinations for students who missed out and date of declaration of results are concerned, the Court allowed DU to file an affidavit.
The Court today also clarified that it was only examining the aspect of delay in conduction of exams and not the mode of evaluation – the online Open Book Examination (OBE).
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Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for petitioner Prateek Sharma, also raised concerns over the condition of the Common Service Centres (CSEs) that are proposed to be used by students who do not have the resources to sit for the online examination of Delhi University . He said,
“There are 12,000 CSEs that are not even working. There are no scribes, WiFi or infrastructure.”
Since counsel for the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development, Advocate Ripudaman Singh, did not have any instructions on that aspect, the Court directed the HRD Ministry, as well as the IT Ministry, to file an affidavit before the next date of hearing for Delhi University exams .
The matter will be heard next on July 22.
