Delhi University writes to Telegram over group to ‘help’ students with open book exams

DU’s OBE began Monday for the final semester postgraduate and undergraduate students with nearly 35,000 students taking the exam on the first day.

“It has come to the notice of the Examination Branch that a WhatsApp/Telegram group has been created to take help for examination. Students are advised not to subscribe to any such groups. We have identified those students, and all these cases will come under unfair means and action will be taken as per university rules,” read the email.

Dean (Examinations) D S Rawat said he was alerted to the group on Monday morning.

“It was brought to our notice around 9:30 am. It said it was a group to help students with exam related material. We don’t know what the purpose of the group was, but it could be anything. Just because it’s OBE doesn’t mean students can share their answer sheets with each other,” he said.

“We have identified 110-112 students who were part of the group. We have identified them and if their names match our database, we will take action. Our Computer Centre also wrote to the Telegam app, asking them to block the group,” he said.

Rawat said the group was blocked within half an hour. He also said the mass emailing created some panic among students, but it was clarified that it was not directed at them individually.

He said the unfair means committee of the varsity is looking into the matter. “Since the group only mentioned OBE, we need to check whether it was a DU group or not. We will also try to ascertain whether the group was created to fleece students,” he said.

Rawat said that barring these glitches, OBE was progressing smoothly.

On Monday, out of the 33,302 students who were registered to appear for the exams, 32,978, took it. On Tuesday, 14,769 out of 15,374 registered students sat for the exam.

“The attendance was 99 percent on the first day and 96 percent the second day. We don’t see such numbers even in physical exams,” Rawat said.