45-day deadline over fortnight ago, law students await results

At least, 30 students from Shivaji Maratha Law College, ILS Law College, Marathwada Mitramandal Law College and others met the controller of examinations at SPPU but they said they are not satisfied with mere assurances alone.

[related-post]
Watch Video: What’s making news

“According to the Maharashtra Public Universities, results should be declared within 45 days, including the 15-day grace period. Already, two months have passed, but our results are not declared. When we approach the authorities, we sense that there is some tussle between the university and the college teachers over paper correction, which probably didn’t take place on time. The university officials told us go and ask the teachers why they delayed checking papers but is this our job?” said a first-year student.

“The next year’s academic calendar has already been declared and the irony is that the next semester ends on October 24. Since teaching has to end at least 20 days before exams, which is last week of September, how will the syllabus get completed? This means either rushing through syllabus or ending late, giving us little time to prepare for next semester exams,” the student added.

A final-year student said besides the uncertainty of having passed or not, they are also looking at economic losses. “LLM entrances are done, students would have filled at least four colleges or universities forms. Considering that each would on average cost between Rs 1,000 and Rs 1,500, won’t it be a waste if a student hasn’t cleared at all?” he said.

Vaijayanti Joshi, Principal of ILS Law College, which had the responsibility of this year’s central allotment process (paper assessments), has admitted to a slight delay in the process but said the corrected papers have been handed over to SPPU by June 10.

“Had more number of teachers come in for paper checking, the process would have been smoother and faster. It’s not that teachers did not come in but if 100-110 appointments were made, they did not come continuously and instead kept coming in slots, gradually. Unfortunately, there is no compulsion on any teacher to correct a minimum number of papers or within a fixed time. Since each teacher’s style of assessment differs, it is a time-consuming process. Besides, we had nearly 80,000 papers to assess,” she said.

Joshi added that she does understand the students’ concerns of both losing money on entrance examinations as well as delay in next year’s academic calendar. “But is not an enormous delay, students will catch up,” she said.

Meanwhile, Dr Ashok Chavan, controller of examinations, admitted to the ‘slight’ delay and said the results of the five-year law course have already been declared. Refusing to give reasons on why results were delayed, he said, “We are working on the third-year results and should declare it within a day or two.”