Bhubaneswar: Following the Supreme Court order, the state Higher Education department has issued detailed guidelines for conduct of final semester examination of UG and PG courses in state-run universities and autonomous colleges.
Higher Education secretary Saswat Mishra has written to vice-chancellors of all state universities and the principals of autonomous colleges in this regard, Wednesday. Mishra asked the institutions to conduct the examinations on holidays, if required, to complete the examinations on time.
“Results of final semester/year UG and PG examinations, including back paper examinations, must be published by October 31,” he wrote in the letter.
Special examinations will also be held for those who cannot take the final examinations for whatever reasons. But, Mishra said, these special examinations will be conducted by the universities and autonomous colleges once the Covid-19 situation improves, hopefully by December 2020.
He further instructed the higher education institutions to strictly follow the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) communicated by Union Ministry of Education for conducting examinations in offline mode.
“The universities and autonomous colleges shall follow the UGC original guideline dated 29.04.2020 regarding intermediate semester/year examinations and publish results by December 31, 2020,” read the guidelines.
All the universities and autonomous colleges have been directed to chalk out their own plans and strategies for conducting examinations within the prescribed deadline in adherence to UGC guidelines. The institutions were further asked to provide necessary support to Odisha State Open University for conduct of its examinations through OSOU Study Centres.
As it is a time-bound task, the university and college authorities have been empowered to call any employee (both teaching and non-teaching) to join duty on holidays and vacations for smooth and timely conduct of examination, evaluation, result publication and ancillary purposes.
These decisions are also applicable to final year students of distance education students of Utkal University and Fakir Mohan University, all types of teacher education institutions and all self-financing courses/PPP based self-financing courses.
However, it will not be applicable to courses including medical, paramedical, pharmacy courses run under the aegis of other departments of the state government.