OU students protest, say postpone internal exams

 Hyderabad: First-year M. Sc and M. Com students of Osmania University boycotted their second internal exams, stating that the number of classes held to complete the syllabus for the exam was insufficient. Over 700 second-semester students of the College of Science and the College of Commerce and Business Management protested since 11 am on Wednesday, demanding that the exams be postponed.

 When the timetable for the exam was released, students approached vice-chancellor D. Ravinder on July 10, seeking his intervention to postpone the exams until the syllabus required to write the exams are taught.

 Students pursuing various disciplines, including biochemistry, genetics, computer science and commerce, alleged that less than 50 per cent of the syllabus was taught this semester. “The timetable changed this year as we sought a summer vacation for 20 days, owing to the intense heat back in May. We expected the exams to be postponed since we lost some classes. Rather, they were preponed. When we proposed that the exams be postponed, the VC did not utter a word and no action was taken either. Today, as we tried to approach the VC again, we were stopped by the police,” said Vunnam Prasanna, an M. Sc student.

 Osmania University students were also joined by students of the science discipline from Saifabad and Nizam College, who had been protesting in the rain since morning.

 “We knew we would be forced to write the exam; so, we locked ourselves inside our hostel at 8 am. The exam began at 9 am and 11 am, we realised we needed to lodge our protest,” said Abhignya P., another student.

 The students said that each semester, they must have at least four months to complete the syllabus; but this time, they barely had two months. Their first semester started in the second half of November last year and ended in March-April, while the second semester started on June 5 and is likely to end by July 27. External exams are to begin on July 28, according to the timetable.

Only two to three students from the college appeared for the microbiology exam. The others protested on the campus in the rain, without having food or water. Many students, mostly women, were seen shivering but carried on with their protest.

 According to students, each internal paper has a weightage of 20 marks that carry a weightage of 30 per cent in the final external exams.

 Neither the vice-chancellor nor the registrar Laxminarayan Pappula was available for comment.