A number of students at IIT Kharagpur have written to the director, listing the constraints they would face trying to return to the institute for writing the end-semester exams in-person from April 7 to 14.
The IIT authorities had last week mandated that students have to come to the campus by March 31 for writing the exams in-person.
Classes of the ongoing semester are being held online as a precaution against Covid.
Some students said it would be financially taxing for them to come to the campus for a fortnight and then return home after the exams. The students will have to return to the campus again when offline classes of the new semester start in July. Some said they were attending an internship and coming back to the campus would disrupt that.
The IIT authorities said students who were unable to come to the campus now could write supplementary exams in the next semester.
The Technology Students’ Gymkhana (TSG), which represents all students of the institute, wrote to the director, V.K. Tewari, on Monday highlighting the inconveniences some students would face coming to the campus now, said TSG vice-president Devaki Nandana.
“Third and fourth-year students have internships in summer, some have off-campus internships and second and third-year students will have to prepare for the upcoming internship exams (which start from July)…. Therefore, those students will have to study for the current semester, their internship tests, and also for the compensatory test (of the previous semester) which will be very hard for these students to manage,” says the letter.
Several colleges have given an option of online exams to their students considering the problems faced by them.
“IIT BHU has also decided to give students the option to choose from either an online or offline mode of exams,” the letter says.