Hyderabad: After continual protests for two days, BTech and MTech students of the National Institute of Technology, Warangal (NITW) concluded their agitation. The protests were held against offline mode of examinations keeping in mind two years of online classes.
BTech students from NITW’s second, third, and final years as well as first-year students in the MTech programme held protests on April 18 and 19 on campus. They protested against the administrations’ decision to hold the end-of-semester exams in an offline mode beginning April 27.
Students bemoan offline exams:
Speaking to Siasat.com, a student leader, and a PhD student from NITW, Vinod Loknayak, said, “the classes were taken online, so we want the examination to be conducted online as well. Other IITs and colleges have held online examinations in view of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“The administration said that a month’s relaxation time could be considered for offline preparation before the exams would be conducted. But they have not budged from their stance on offline mode of examinations since,” he added.
A student from the college on condition of anonymity said, “when we were called back to college mid-March, the conditions of the hostel were unhygienic. How can the college administration expect us to study in such conditions? We are unable to study offline suddenly after two years of online classes. So the students staged a protest for the exams to be conducted online. However, since the administration and the students had to arrive at an understanding, we called off the protest.”
Administration flags potential exam malpractice:
NITW dean of student welfare, P Ravi Kumar told Siasat.com “We are sticking to the guidelines given by the Union ministry of education and state to reopen colleges. The students have agreed to write the exam offline. The students could be sitting in groups and passing answers to each other at home, online exams are not entertained by us.”
The National Institutes of Technology (NITs) are central government-owned-public technical institutes that are overlooked by the Union ministry of education.
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