DU Hindi medium students allege delay in revaluation

Final-year Delhi University students who are pursuing postgraduation in Political Science have complained of delay in revaluation of their answer sheets after many of them were asked to repeat the exam.

Hindi medium students had protested last week over `discrimination' against them, citing the large proportion of them who were awarded ``essential repeat”, or ER.'
DU agreed to delay the entrance test results for MPhil by a week to September 21 so that the affected students have time to get their answer scripts revalued by the University.

But now the students allege that the revaluation process has not even begun.
Of the total 400 final year students in DU’s North Campus, 102 have been given an ER. “Eighty per cent of them are from the Hindi medium. Majority of them have got an ER in International Political Economy (IPE),” a student said.

Students allege that the answer scripts are still lying in the Political Science department. They need to be sent  to the DU's examination branch.

Can’t get admission
“All the students who got an ER have given entrance tests in various universities for MPhil and BEd. They cannot get admission as ER is written on the mark sheet. And the admissions to these universities will start soon,” a student said.

“I saw the answer scripts still lying in the department. This delay can cost us a year,” another student said.

“Although the officials have postponed the date of announcement of the result for MPhil admission in DU, there are students who have applied in other universities.”
Head of the Department P K Dutta said the allegations of victimisation of Hindi medium students was quite a serious issue, but he disagreed with the charge.

“DU is a central university and not a state university. Still we try to give bilingual lectures. We started taking Hindi tutorials and giving translations of important articles,” he said.

“The faculty is hired from different parts of the country and there is an examination procedure which needs to be followed,” he added.

Dutta added that the preliminary examination of the results show that of the 16 papers, students have got an ER in two papers. “Most ER’s are in IPE. Thus the whole victimisation allegation goes against the argument. Also during the preliminary examination we found that some 25 to 30 per cent students from North Campus and about 12 per cent from South Campus have been given an ER,” he said.