Colleges affiliated to Calcutta University (CU) may soon find it difficult to send up enough examinees to appear in BA and B.Sc examinations if these institutions are to follow the varsity’s recent directive, asking its affiliates to enforce attendance rules for students.

The directive says the colleges must enforce the rules that make it mandatory for all students to attend a minimum 75 per cent of classes.

Heads of various colleges affiliated to CU are considering seeking its permission to relax the rules for students, less than 40 per cent of whom attend the stipulated number of classes.

“It is difficult for us to be suddenly strict in enforcing the attendance rules, as many students do not attend classes and, instead, go to private tutors,” the head of a college said.

If the colleges are to go by the book, few students will qualify for the BA and B.Sc examinations, he added.

The matter was discussed at a meeting of the state-level body of college principals recently. “The attendance rules are nothing new. Some students are working and some come from poor families, who cannot attend classes regularly. But they will gradually have to adjust with the system,” said Ranajit Basu, general secretary, West Bengal Council for College Principals.

Calcutta University, as part of its drive to improve the quality of the teaching-learning process in all its affiliated colleges, had ordered the heads to ensure that each student of their institutions attended a minimum 75 per cent of the total classes held in a year.

No student having less than 75 per cent attendance should be sent up by the college to appear in the BA and B.Sc examinations.

After receiving the order, the authorities of a number of colleges monitored the day-to-day attendance of students for the past few months and found that only between 35 per cent and 40 per cent students attended 75 per cent of the total classes.

According to principals of such colleges, though the CU rule is nothing new, it has become a convention for most colleges not to enforce it.

At the same time, the university has also introduced a system of surprise visits to colleges to check students’ attendance registers. The university will visit colleges more frequently before the under-graduate exams to ensure that no one without the stipulated attendance writes them.