Magadh University gears up to conduct exams

GAYA: Magadh University (MU) is gearing up to complete all the pending examinations amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Recently, the chancellor’s office had asked the universities to frame special regulations for holding exams. According to MU vice-chancellor (VC) Rajendra Prasad, a meeting of the examination board will shortly be convened to frame the regulations.
“Online exams can be conducted for courses with less number of students whereas programmes where the number of students is large, an OMR-based test can be taken to ensure early publication of results,” the VC told this newspaper.
However, conducting an exam in the midst of a pandemic is quite challenging for MU. On the one hand, it has to regularize its academic session and on the other, it has to protect the students, invigilators, evaluators and others from Covid-19. Issues like social distancing and sanitization of the exam centres will have to be taken care of.
Nodal officer Sanjay Kumar said, “The board’s meet will be held in a couple of days. Hence, we are making arrangements for conducting the pending exams.”
Earlier, MU had released a schedule according to which the postgraduate and Degree Part III exams were to begin from July 6 and 16, respectively. But they were not held because of the pandemic.
Election duty amid Covid: The recruitment of university teachers for election-related duty as well as acquisition of college buildings for use as strongrooms and accommodation of central forces will act as a hurdle in the session regularization exercise of MU.
Sushil Kumar, president of the PG Teachers’ Association, pointed out that they should be exempted from election duty as “conducting exams is equally important”.
“Moreover, teachers above 60 years of age should not be assigned election-related duty as it can jeopardize their lives,” he said.