Calcutta University has scrapped its practice of holding home centre examinations in colleges that offer postgraduate courses.

The vice-chancellor, registrar, controller of examination and other members of the CU syndicate decided at a meeting on Wednesday.

Students pursuing postgraduate courses in colleges will also have to write their examinations at away centres, the syndicate decided following allegations of students using unfair means en masse at examination venues.

Last year, the teachers’ association at Calcutta University wrote to the vice-chancellor expressing “worries about many serious malpractices” in the conduct of the examinations for postgraduate courses in colleges.

CU's authorised vice-chancellor, Santa Datta, said: "It has been decided that the students of the colleges and those of the university will write the examinations at a common facility on the university campus. If the number of candidates is too high, the students will write the examination at some other colleges. We won't allow the (postgraduate) students to write the examination at their respective colleges. We want to curb complaints of malpractice."

The university's registrar, Debasis Das, said the practice would be introduced from the semester examinations scheduled to start on April 9.

"If the college students are required to write the tests at away centres, then the students pursuing the postgraduate course at the university will write the tests at a common facility on the university campus," the registrar told Metro.

Earlier, the students of the university wrote the tests at their respective departments.

"The detailed mechanism will be uploaded on the university's website on Friday," he said.

The invigilators who would be on examination duty will be altered to maintain transparency, the vice-chancellor said.

The Calcutta University Teachers' Association, in a letter to the VC last year, said instances of mass copying came to their notice when the answer scripts were examined.

“It was difficult to distinguish one answer script from another because the content was the same,” a teacher had told this newspaper.

The teachers said that allegations of mass copying were rampant in science subjects.

A CU official said that over the past few years, the colleges with the required infrastructure were allowed to offer postgraduate courses to increase enrolment.

Om Prakash Mishra, the higher education department's nominee to the university's syndicate and JU professor, said he had given a "note of dissent" on the decision. "I thought that the university should have held discussions with the college heads before taking the decision."

Registrar Das said the decision was approved by an overwhelming majority.

On whether the state government-approved contractual teachers in the colleges can evaluate answer scripts, Das said: "It has been left to the postgraduate board of studies to decide."