Mumbai University goofs up in exam centre allotment, students suffer
MU, for the first time, had issued hall tickets for over two lakh undergraduate and postgraduate students via its digital university portal through student login accounts about two months ago. A majority of the hall tickets, however, were riddled with errors
Mumbai: Day One of the third-year BCom exam on Wednesday was chaotic for hundreds of students due to an error in allotment of exam centres by Mumbai University (MU). Due to the last-minute changes, many students reached their exam centres over an hour after the exam began at 10.30 am.
MU, for the first time, had issued hall tickets for over two lakh undergraduate and postgraduate students via its digital university portal through student login accounts about two months ago. A majority of the hall tickets, however, were riddled with errors. According to the university, the exam centres on the earlier hall tickets were changed due to the fact that the centres were updated after they were issued.
“When I reached Gurukul College at Ghatkopar, which was mentioned in my hall ticket, I was told that my exam centre was not there. Finally, when I contacted my college, I learnt that my centre had changed and was now in Somaiya College. Since both colleges are close to my house, I reached on time. But several students were late,” said a student. The same thing happened in Kandivali, where students who reached one exam centre were redirected to another.
In another goof-up by MU, a college in Ghatkopar listed as an exam centre made seating arrangements for 246 students. But on Monday morning, none of the students arrived before the commencement of the examination at 10.30 am. When the college authorities inquired with the university, they were told that the students from their centre had been sent to another examination centre, a professor from the said college told HT on condition of anonymity.
Some blunders happened even before Monday. On March 31, MU had erroneously allotted 2,000 students to an exam centre in Goregaon’s Jashbhai Maganbhai Patel College of Commerce, which has the capacity to accommodate only 300 students.
“We have been telling the university about the confusion in hall tickets for a week but they are ignoring it,” said Pradeep Sawant, a senior senate member and member of the Yuva Sena (UBT). “Releasing provisional admission cards with no date, no timetable, and no fixed exam centre is of no benefit to the students, even if these are released two months before the exam.”
Nationalist Congress Party spokesperson Amol Matele said, “Due to the sloppy management of the MU administration, students are often neglected. If the examination is not conducted smoothly, the NCP will stage an agitation in front of the examination centre in MU.”
The examination administrator said that hall tickets were sent to all the college logins on April 1, and the examination centres of some students were changed as per the request of some colleges. “Accordingly, the revised hall tickets of the students were sent to the college again,” he said. “But as some colleges did not issue revised hall tickets to the students, they reached the exam centre using their old hall tickets.”
The administrator added that students who arrived late were given a time extension. “The students have got revised hall tickets, and instructions have been given to the colleges that they should appear in their revised examination centres from tomorrow,” he said.