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| Unmukt |
New Delhi, Sept. 4: Unmukt Chand had the Cup under his belt and a couple of ministers to back his case. But not everybody is as fortunate as the Under-19 cricket captain.
The first-year student of St Stephens College stood to lose a year for low attendance but was allowed to move up after Delhi University (DU) vice-chancellor Dinesh Singh used his discretionary powers, following pressure from HRD minister Kapil Sibal and sports minister Ajay Maken.
While the college felicitated Chand for bringing home the U-19 World Cup, around 12 of his batchmates, who represented the college in inter-college and inter-university competitions in disciplines like badminton, table tennis and basketball, are likely to remain in the first year.
They too don’t have the required 33.3 per cent attendance sports quota students need to have to be able to sit for exams. Chand had 8 per cent attendance.
Under DU rules, the minimum attendance that general category students need to have to get admit cards is 66.6 per cent.
Like Chand, these students too had moved Delhi High Court, challenging the decision of the college not to issue them admit cards for the second semester exams in May this year.
The court had directed the college to issue them admit cards. But the students could not appear for all the four papers as some of them were over by the time the order came.
Two students were promoted because of good performance in three of the four papers. Two failed. The varsity is yet to announce the results of the others.
Some others from the sports quota, who did not have the required attendance, were issued admit cards after they produced medical certificates. The Association of Old Stephanians (AOS) today accused principal Valson Thampu of discrimination. “The principal allowed admit cards for many sports quota students after they produced medical certificates. But he did not allow issuance of admit cards to students who actually represented the college in inter-college and inter-university sports events. This is discriminatory,” AOS media co-ordinator Ashish Joshi said.
In a media statement, the AOS demanded that all sportspersons detained for lack of attendance be considered for suitable exemption as in the case of Chand.
S.K. Chakravortty, a member of the varsity’s sports council, said: “No student can concentrate on sports and achieve 33 per cent attendance in a year. Every sportsperson spends time for inter-college training, university selection, special coaching, north-zone competitions and all India inter-university competitions.”
He said the council was formulating a policy to calculate the attendance of sports quota students. “We are saying that any student playing for the college or university should get 100 per cent attendance for the period he spends on games and sports, including coaching.”
No comments could be elicited from Thampu.
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