UGC announces final-year-exams to be held in September

With the surge in the number of coronavirus cases, several boards and universities have had to cancel their exams for March and April earlier. However, now the University Grants Commission (UGC) has said that the final year examinations will be held in universities by the end of September.

According to the revised guidelines, these examinations will be conducted in online/offline or blended (online plus offline) mode. Terminal semester students who were to be assessed through examinations in the month of July will now have their examinations conducted by the end of September 2020. At the same time, intermediate semester students will be assessed on the basis of internal assessment. 

A letter has also been written by the Union Home Ministry to the Department of Higher Education in this regard. This letter states that all the examinations coming under the university should be taken. This letter was written by the Union Home Ministry to the Department of Higher Education. It is written in the letter that examinations will be conducted as per the guidelines of UGC, following the instructions of the Ministry of Health.

On the other hand, the Maharashtra government had earlier asked the Prime Minister to direct all national apex regulatory bodies to cancel the examinations of all professional courses and endorse Maharashtra’s decision to do the same. The government has maintained that examinations cannot be held in the state because of the rising number of COVID-19 cases. CM Thackeray had, therefore, urged the Prime Minister to instruct the central apex bodies to issue uniform guidelines on cancellation of the final year exams.

Meanwhile, the state of Maharashtra witnessed 6,555 cases of coronavirus on July 5. This took the COVID-19 tally to 2,11,987 cases. Currently, there are 87,681 active cases in the state. With 3,522 COVID-19 patients discharged in the day, the number of recovered soared to 1,15,262 cases.

On Monday, 204 deaths were reported. 39 deaths were reported from Mumbai, 28 from Navi Mumbai, 17 from Nashik, 16 each from Thane and Jalgaon, 15 from Pune, 7 each from Aurangabad and Solapur, 5 each from Jalna, Dhule and Mira-Bhayandar, 4 each from Ulhasnagar and Satara, three each from Akola and Panvel, two each from Latur, Kalyan-Dombivali, Bhiwandi and Pimpri-Chinchwad and one each from Nagpur, Amravati, Osmanabad, Nanded, Ratnagiri, Kolhapur, Ahmednagar, Raigad and Palghar.