Belagavi: With the state government and Governor Vajubhai Vala failing to come to their rescue, several engineering students of the Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) from Bengaluru, have tweeted to the Prime Minister’s office asking him to intervene in its affairs and set right the mess it is in, in their interests.
The tweets to the prime minister were made on Thursday as a large number of students from various organisations launched an agitation on the VTU campus in Belagavi against its “anti-student policies” which, they claimed, would badly affect their careers.
An engineering student from Bengaluru alleged that the university was unfair in collection of fee and in evaluation and revaluation.
In his tweet to the prime minister, he said, “Our lives are in your hands. We want you to intervene and save the lives of engineering students.”
Several others, also from Bengaluru, objected to the digital evaluation of answer sheets by the VTU, which they claimed had caused many of them to fail. Unwilling to pay the examination fee until the results of the re-evaluation of answer sheets were declared, they also demanded a cut in the examination fee.
Accusing the university of causing confusion by its policies, the students lamented that they were finding it difficult to focus on their education as a result.
“Students, who have failed in more than four subjects are being allowed to write their examinations for the academic year 2016-17 because of the problems that cropped in VTU’s new curriculum. But they have been given only two days to prepare,” the agitating students deplored, warning that they would intensify their agitation if their demands were not met.
VTU postpones all exams
Bowing to pressure from the students and a stern warning from the state government, the Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) has postponed all its examinations.
A press release from the university said the final year BE examination, scheduled to start from June 5, had been postponed to June 12 and all other lower semester examinations were rescheduled to June 23. Other under graduate and post graduate examinations will be completed by July 31. A detailed time table will be issued on June 3 on vtu.ac.in.
Earlier in the day, Vice Chancellor, Dr. Karsiddappa attributed the delay to the introduction of a new system. "It was indigenously developed software. We removed all the outsourced staff too. Under the new rules only faculty with at least five years of teaching experience were selected for the valuation work. All these qualitative changes led to the delay," he explained.
Claiming that the changes were meant for the better of the students, he said responding to the many complaints of answer sheets going missing during scanning or evaluation, the university had introduced a bar code. "Under the new system we had to import the data of over 24 lakh students from the NIC. Many students' names went missing as they had either changed their college or stream of study. But the new software has brought down the cost of valuation from Rs 14.5 crore to Rs 4 crore," he added.
Fee hike
The VTU has decided to up its fee to generate more revenue. Under the new fee structure, the application fee for permanent affiliation has risen from Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000 and the fee for starting a new engineering or architecture college has been increased from Rs 3 lakhs to Rs 5 lakhs. The application fee for autonomous colleges has gone up from Rs 10,000 to Rs 30,000 and the processing fee for autonomous colleges has increased from Rs 2.5 lakhs to Rs 5 lakhs. But maintaining that the university was not facing a cash crunch, the Vice Chancellor said it had a cash balance of Rs 30 crore. "The university, however, requires Rs 6 crore every month for maintenance and staff salary. Through revision in the affiliation and other fee, it plans to collect Rs 110 crore,” he said.
