ROURKELA: A day before resumption of physical classes in National Institute of Technology-Rourkela (NIT-R) after the third Covid wave, hundreds of students staged protest in front of the Academic Building on Tuesday demanding conduct of the upcoming semester examinations in online mode.
Apprehending that they will be made to sit for offline examinations after return to the classroom mode of teaching, the students said they are apparently not prepared for it. Spring and end semester examinations are due by third week of April.
Sources said the demand for online examination came in wake of the protest by students of IIT-Kharagpur on Monday over the same issue following which the authorities there allowed both offline and online tests.
On the day, a large number of students of different hostels staged agitation at the main gate of the Academic Building for nearly three hours. Subsequently, some representatives of the agitating students were called for discussion with NIT-R Director Prof K Umamaheswar Rao. Sources said the discussion remained inconclusive and another round of talks will be held on Wednesday evening.
Downplaying the protest, in-charge registrar Prof Rohan Dhiman said the student didn’t stage any agitation but came for discussion with request for holding online examinations. The authorities would take an appropriate decision in this regard after considering every aspect.
Following cluster outbreak of Covid-19 cases, physical classes in NIT-R were suspended for the third time in January this year. Since the pandemic situation has eased now, students have been asked to return to the campus for offline classes except those in the first year.
Since the outbreak of Covid, physical teaching in NIT-R has been severely affected with the institute getting closed from March 2020. By March 2021, post-graduate and final year under-graduate students were asked to return to the campus. However, the institute was closed in April 2021 after a spike in Covid cases. By November 2021, students began to arrive on campus in a phased manner but NIT-R had to be closed again from January 2022.