he JNTU Hyderabad has created a record of sorts, not with the achievements of their students but detaining nearly 10,000 students, for little fault of theirs.
The only mistake of these students was to take admission in colleges that were later disaffiliated by the university concerning quality of teaching but permitted to admit students after the Supreme Court’s intervention. These students, however, were admitted much before the quality of these colleges became an issue. The confrontation between the varsity and the colleges is now threatening to rob a precious academic of their life. Most of these students lost an opportunity to move to higher class with shortage of as little as one credit. A majority of these unlucky students are from the 170-odd colleges that fought a legal war with the varsity last year after permission was denied to admit students based on several reports.
The turbulence during those six months made colleges almost dysfunctional with teachers moving out for better opportunities.
Students had to just come to the college and sit idle as the managements spent time mostly in courts. “How are we responsible if such drastic decisions were taken impacting the classes midway the academic year,” asks Hemanth, one of the affected student.
The Government also promised to shift them to other functioning colleges but nothing happened thus impacting their academics. “It’s impossible to learn and pass without teaching in engineering. Our precious academic year is at stake now,” says Rohit, another student.
“It’s a failure of the system and corrective steps should be taken to save the career of these students,” says Marri Aditya Reddy, PCC Secretary, who has taken up their cause.
Students are demanding the authorities to relax the 50 per cent mandatory clearance of credits for promotion to next class to 30 per cent understanding the political and administrative turmoil they had to go through during the last two years. In fact, the JNTU Kakinada in August last has reduced the credits to 30 per cent for promotion to next class from 40 per cent citing loss of academic days during the ‘Saimaikyandhra’ agitation.
JNTU Hyderabad authorities unwilling to be quoted said the case was not presented well at the Academic Senate that reduced the pre-requisite credits to old students but not to these affected students. “Their issue is genuine and only the Academic Senate can take a decision.
The Registrar, Prof. N. Yadaiah said that with the semester almost completed reducing the credits will also be futile as students would not meet the pre-requisite attendance. Moreover, the Academic Senate has discussed issue threadbare and conveyed to the students, he said.
