UNIVERSITY OF Mumbai Vice-Chancellor Sanjay Deshmukh, who is being criticised for the unprecedented delay in result declaration, may not be asked to step down anytime soon, according to government officials. Despite the Shiv Sena and the Congress demanding Deshmukh’s resignation for his decision to introduce the onscreen assessment process hurriedly, it is unlikely that such an action would be taken against the V-C now, said a senior government official. “At this point, the priority is to get the results declared at the earliest. In such a situation, the V-C’s stay is crucial because most of the senior positions at the varsity are lying vacant,” said an official on condition of anonymity. Currently, the posts of Pro-V-C is vacant. The position of Director of Examinations is held temporarily by an in-charge official. Registrar M A Khan is on his way out after being appointed as the CEO of the Haj Committee. On Friday, the V-C revealed at a meeting chaired by Legislative Council chairperson Ramraje Naik Nimbalkar that the university will miss the July 31 deadline set by the Chancellor and Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao for results of Commerce and Law students. The same day, the government said an inquiry would be initiated into the manner in which the new system was implemented. Minister of State for Higher Education Ravindra Waikar in his reply to a calling attention motion in the Legislative Assembly, told the House that an inquiry will be initiated against Deshmukh. However, the government may wait till all results are declared and marksheets are issued to students before taking any action. “Merely declaring the results is not enough. Issues over quality of assessment may come to light only after declaration of results. Issuing marsheets to lakhs of students will also be difficult,” said the official. State Education Minister Vinod Tawde met the governor on Saturday to apprise him of the status of assessment. He informed Rao that some results will miss the July 31 deadline. With two days left to the deadline, teachers continued with assessment of answersheets on Saturday. Over 2.71 lakh answersheets are pending for correction. Around 3,039 teachers have evaluated and moderated over 66,000 answersheets. Meanwhile, the varsity declared results of seven subjects with low student strength on Saturday. Of the 477 exams that the university conducted in March and April this year, the results of 135 of them were declared by Saturday night.
