KOLKATA: West Bengal Education Minister Partha Chatterjee and officials of the higher education department met Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar on Monday at Raj Bhavan to discuss over the issue of the UGC’s recent directive to hold terminal semester exams compulsory by end-September.
The state government has been opposing UGC's directive citing the COVID-19 pandemic.
Recently, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the same issue seeking his intervention. Before Mamata’s letter to the PM, the state education secretary had written to the higher education secretary of the MHRD criticising UGC’s directive.
"The Governor at his level assured Chatterjee that in view of the stance reflected in the letter of the Chief Minister to the Prime Minister, he would also take up the matter appropriately," said an official of the Raj Bhavan.
Sources in Raj Bhavan said, Chatterjee mentioned the advisory issued in April by the UGC allowing universities to be flexible and the government to issue guidelines along with the revised circular issued by the statutory body are conflicting. He also pointed out that some states and UTs such as Maharashtra, Punjab, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry had already decided not to hold the terminal semester exams.
Chatterjee also allegedly told the Governor that, considering the current trend of rapidly growing number of COVID-19 cases, it could not be predicted if the situation would be conducive to hold exams by September end.
"Besides, going through the statistics of the Government of India on digital access across the country, it will not be appropriate to hold online exams, which will be discriminatory against a large section of students, especially in rural areas, who do not have access to computers and internet," he pointed out during the course of the discussion.