Mumbai University 'striving' to upload all results of undergraduate exams; cites deluge as reason for delay

Mumbai: Facing flak for delaying the results, the Mumbai University Thursday informed the Bombay High court that it is now “striving” to complete the assessment of answer-sheets and upload all results of undergraduate exams on its website by 6 September. [caption id=“attachment_3877593” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Mumbai University. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons[/caption] This is the sixth time that the varsity has pushed the result announcement date after missing the initial 31 July deadline. Varsity’s counsel Rui Rodrigues told the court that the “Ganpati festival and Tuesday’s deluge” in the megapolis set its assessment process back by a further couple of days. A bench of Justices Anoop V Mohta and Bharati Dangre directed the state Common Entrance Test (CET) cell to extend the deadline for applying to the university’s three years law courses to 6 September. Rodrigues said the university had completed the assessment and declared results for all the three and five year LLB courses. He said of the “153 exams conducted for various Arts courses, results for 151 had been declared, of the 47 exams for various courses offered for the BSc degree, results for 43 had been declared, and for the 50 exams conducted for BCom courses, results for 30 exams had been declared.” However, the university is yet to upload these results on its website. “The heavy rains on Tuesday resulted in power outages and disrupted internet connectivity because of which our server crashed, and the results could not be uploaded. However, we have outsourced the work to another server and results should be declared by this (Thursday) evening,” Rodrigues said. “We have also decided to send the complete gazette or broadsheet containing the marks for all students to respective colleges so that they can check their marks from the college bulletin boards,” he said. There was further delay as many teachers took some days off from work to participate in the Ganpati festival. However, they are coming back now, and the authorities are trying to declare the pending results at the earliest, Rodrigues said while urging the court to refrain from passing any orders till 6 September. The CET cell had earlier extended its 31 August deadline to 5 September; on Thursday, its counsel told the court that any “further extension of the deadline will be difficult”. The court, however, said that the cell must “keep in mind the interest of the students who had to suffer for no fault of theirs” and directed it to extend the deadline for applying to the University’s three years law courses to 6 September. “Several students are unable to secure admissions to law colleges of their choice in the absence of their undergraduate marksheets. You must consider their helplessness. “Besides, your (CET) deadline always rests on the foundation that the university will declare its results by a given date. If that very date is not fixed, then how can you fix a deadline?” the bench said.