A section of students at Jadavpur University confined vice-chancellor Suranjan Das and other officials in their offices till late on Monday night, demanding that the fourth-year BTech examinations be held online. They sought the reversal of the examination board’s decision to hold the examination offline.
The fourth-year students, who constitute the last non-domiciled batch, had said they were struggling to find accommodation required to write the exams physically and wanted the tests to be held online.
The confinement started from Monday afternoon five days after the faculty of students’ union in engineering and technology (Fetsu) wrote to VC Das asking for the exams to be held online.
In the letter, the students sought online exams because the university had not responded to their accommodation problem.
Partha Pratim Roy, the general secretary of the Jadavpur University Teachers’ Association (Juta) said when the university sought feedback seeking how many students from the fourth-year BTech programme need accommodation, only one student appealed.
“The university proposed accommodating them in the university’s hostels or in youth hostels run by the state government. Monday’s agitation proves they want to write the exam online because this won’t involve invigilation,” he said.
VC Das said: “The university will stick to what the examination board has decided”.
