Students surround teachers during the protest at City College on Sunday morning. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

Over 100 first-year students of City College, barred from appearing for Part I because of low attendance, forced the college authorities to backtrack after gheraoing the principal and other teachers for over 24 hours from Saturday noon.

At least 60 per cent attendance is mandatory to appear for Part I, which starts in June. The protesters were part of a group of 253 first-year students of the college who had not met the requirement.

They started a hunger strike from 3am on Sunday to pressure the authorities further. The gherao of the principal and some heads of departments continued till 2.45pm on Sunday, when principal Prasanta Mandal announced that no student would be barred from writing the examination.

“The students promised to attend classes regularly from now on. Throughout Saturday night and Sunday they asked for a chance to rectify their mistakes. So we decided to allow them to appear in Part I,” a tired Mandal told Metro over phone after the gherao was lifted.

He felt the roll back would set a bad precedent. “We tried to stick to our stand but we were helpless. The students were getting hysterical. Some were falling at teachers’ feet and weeping, some others were threatening to slash their arms with blades,” said Mandal.

Calcutta University officials, however, said they would intervene if the college authorities allowed students with “abysmally” low attendance to sit for the examination. “We haven’t received a report from the college yet. But the university will see to it that those with very low attendance do not write the examination,” said a CU official.

“We are happy that we were able to convince the principal and other teachers. Otherwise, so many boys and girls would have lost a year,” said Abhishek Mishra, the general secretary of the college union who was among the students who brokered the deal for the first-year students.

The college union is run by an anti-SFI coalition of Chhatra Parishad and Trinamul Chhatra Parishad.

The protesters were not apologetic about their dismal attendance. “The list of discollegiate students was put up on March 26. We have been trying to reason with the authorities since then. But they forced us to take this extreme step before relenting,” said Subhadip Saha, a BCom first-year student of the college.

He claimed the attendance register was not properly maintained. “The records show that I have only nine per cent attendance, which is impossible. Sometimes professors don’t take the attendance. They ask us to write down our roll numbers on a piece of paper. We suspect that the registers are not updated after this.”

Gurupada Giri, a first-year Sanskrit honours student, admitted that he had attended only 10 per cent of the classes, as the registers showed. “I work in a shop and hence missed a lot of classes. In any case, I was not aware of the 60 per cent rule,” he said.

Examinees with over 75 per cent attendance do not face penal measures. Those with attendance between 60 and 74 per cent are called non-collegiate. They can pay a fine of Rs 100 and become collegiate. Those with attendance below 60 per cent are declared discollegiate and barred from writing examinations.