Punjabi University, Patiala has postponed its semester exams for the UG and PG courses. The exams were supposed to commence on December 14, but an official notice has been put up on the official site at punjabiuniversity.ac.in, stating that the semester exams now stand postponed. As of now, a fresh schedule for conducting the exams is awaited.
Reportedly, this decision to postpone the exams is due to an ongoing teachers’ strike across the state. The teachers across the government universities and colleges have now suspended the academic activities as per the call by the Punjab Federation of University and College Teachers Organisations. As a result, the employees across the universities have now decided to boycott the examination process.
The official notification says:
As per the orders issued by the Dean of Academic Affairs, B. Tech (Semester III, V and VII) and M. Tech (Semester I, III and VII) examinations starting from December 14, 2021 are currently adjourned. The probable date for the commencement of these examinations is December 20, 2021. New date sheets in this regard will be uploaded on the University’s website soon.
Apart from this, it has also come to our notice that many departments and colleges have not lodged all the subjects of the students online due to which there is difficulty in conducting examinations. They are instructed to upload all the required data in the next two days, otherwise they will be charged a fee.
Now, as per this notification, the fresh date for holding the postponed examination is likely to be December 20. It further elaborated that the reason for this deferment is some pending examination-related work on side of the departments and colleges. Hence, they have now been asked to finish the formalities first or be penalized.
As per reports, the reason behind the postponement of the exams is due to the teachers’ strike. According to Prof. Bhupinder Singh Virk, president of the Punjabi University Teachers’ Union, the reason behind starting the strike is due to the failure of the state government in implementing the UGC pay scales. Punjab still remains to be the only state where the implementation has not been done. The UGC pay scales were notified in November 2017 and the UGC regulations came into force in 2018.
This time, the university has adopted a blended mode for conducting the semester examinations. For some courses, the exams will be held in the online mode, while for the others, they will be held in the offline mode. This pattern was also followed during the March 2021 examinations of the university as well.
