DU may consider reopening, Delhi govt varsities to go offline

Crucially, an education department official said the requirement for institutes to maintain 50% of classroom or laboratory capacity at any given time will be done away with. So far, DU officials have been citing the DDMA’s 50% requirement as the primary reason for it not having resumed offline theory classes since the pandemic.

DU Vice-Chancellor Yogesh Singh told The Indian Express that the university will be examining the possibility of reopening with this change. “We will examine the guidelines and if it enables re-opening without any conditions, we will certainly do so. Since we have students from all around the country, if we find that we can reopen, we would want to give them some notice period — perhaps 7, 10 or 15 days,” he said, adding that the university would look at restarting physical classes for students of all years.

So far, the limited reopening of the university has been restricted to access to the library and to labs for practicals for final-year students, while all theory classes have been held online throughout the pandemic.

AUD PRO Anshu Kumar said that while the university is still awaiting the DDMA’s order, they have begun preparing the campus for reopening. “We need to see the order to know exactly what is expected of us but regardless, we have begun sanitising the campus for reopening and we will abide by the guidelines and directives issued by the government,” she said.

While JNU authorities did not respond to queries on its reopening plans, those at Jamia Millia Islamia said that they will wait for directions from the University Grants Commission. “We will wait for UGC guidelines and instructions, following which the Executive Council will take a decision accordingly on this,” said PRO Ahmed Azeem.