DU Open Book Exams : Delhi HC Seeks Report On Common Service Centres(CSC) Across Country

The Single Bench of Justice Prathiba M Singh has issued notice to the Delhi University to submit a counter affidavit by July 30.

The order has come in ongoing matter on Anupam & Ors v. Union of India wherein the Petitioners have asked for the cancellation of the online OBE.

In place of the OBE, the Petitioners have suggested evaluations based on internal assessment, take-home assignments, presentations and projects, and performance in past semesters.

In today's proceedings, the Delhi University informed the court that the question papers for the online OBE will be sent to the email ID of the candidate.

In addition to this, a consolidated list of participating colleges have been published along with the contact details and email IDs of concerned persons in each of these colleges who will address the grievances faced by the students while taking the exams, if any.

'If a student is unable to upload the answer sheet on the centralised portal, the same can be mailed to the concerned College also', Professor Vinay Gupta, Dean of Examinations, submitted.

The Information Technology department of the University informed the court that services of a cloud empanelled with the Ministry of the Electronics and Information Technology has been engaged to store the data the will be generated through the online exams.

The court was also informed that a committee of 4 members will also be constituted post the examinations to look into the glitches faced by students while taking the online exams.

This committee, which will have 4 academicians as its members, will look into the grievances of the students and would respond to the same within 5 days.

In addition to this, the court was informed by the Secretary of Common Service Centres Academy (CSC) that the Delhi University has not provided it with the list of students who will be appearing for the online exams.

Senior Advocate Saurav Datta, who appeared for the Delhi University informed the court that the services of the CSCs have only been engaged for conducting the final exams and not the mock tests.

Showing concerns regarding this fact, the court said:

'How do you expect the students who are completely dependent on the services of CSCs to familiarise themselves with the format of the exams when the CSCs are not engaged for conducting mock tests?'

The Delhi University, however, informed the court that at this stage the list of students who are willing to engage the services of the CSCs cannot be provided.

'You should've done this exercise at the time of filling up of examination forms itself', the court remarked.

During the course of the proceedings, the concerns were also raised regarding the functioning of the CSCs across the country.

One of the Petitioners informed the court that a total of 12,000 CSCs are not even operational.

On this query, CSC Academy informed the court that the guidelines of the Ministry of Home Affairs had exempted the CSCs from the lockdown subject to the decisions of the local administration.

'However, in most of the States, the local administration has not allowed the CSCs to operate', CSC Academy submitted.

At this stage, the court asked the CSC Academy to submit a detailed report on the functioning of the CSC centres across the country.

The matter will next be taken up on July 31.