New Delhi: The University of Delhi has told the Delhi High Court it is working out how to help final year students aspiring to study abroad, who need an early degree to hold on to their foreign offers. The Delhi University told the Delhi High Court on Friday, September 11th that its officials are exploring the best possible solution for students facing issues regarding foreign admissions. As per a recent report, many final year students of the University of Delhi who have been admitted in universities abroad are facing issues pertaining to the declaration of their final year result. The students admitted to foreign universities require an early degree to secure their seats.
The counsel for Delhi University said that currently there are 8 students from postgraduate programmes and 180 students from undergraduate courses applying for letters of assurance.
A bench of High Court Justices Hima Kohli and Subramonium Prasad asked the University to take action as soon as possible and revert on September 14th for further hearing on the subject. According to Advocate Mohindar Rupal, who is representing the University, University officials are in consultation among themselves to find a solution that would quell final year students’ anxiety regarding the result. They are working on the proper structure of the comfort letters and providing a specific date for the declaration of results.
Comfort letters for students aspiring to study abroad
The device under discussion was a letter of assurance, sometimes called a comfort letter: a document from the university that a student could show a foreign institution while the final result was still pending. For students aspiring to study abroad on offers that depended on their degree, such a letter could decide whether a seat was kept.
The 188 applicants mentioned in court, 180 from undergraduate courses and 8 from postgraduate programmes, were those who had asked the university for exactly that paper. The court was told the letters under preparation would give a specific date for the declaration of results, which is why officials were consulting among themselves rather than simply signing them: whatever date went into a letter had to fit a single results calendar for the whole final year cohort.
The complication was that Delhi University had never run an examination cycle like this one. The final year open book examinations had been held online from 10 August, Bar and Bench reported, after the High Court cleared them, and evaluation was still under way when the court took up the comfort letter question.
Those students demanding letters of assurance can receive their result confidentially, said an official. As per the High Court,
“The aspect of the Cumulative Grade Point Average viz-a-viz Comparative Grade Point Average for assessing the results of the UG Final year students is still not clear from the affidavit of the Delhi University. Appropriate light shall be thrown on this issue on the next date of hearing.”
This issue came up in the High Court during the hearing of a petition regarding the Open Book Examination (OBE) for Final year undergraduate students. DU had assured the High Court earlier that the results will be declared by October end.
Delhi University: Delhi High Court deadlines that followed
The hearings of September were part of a longer case. The petitions behind it, filed by law student Prateek Sharma and the National Federation of the Blind, had already produced directions in August that no student who had opted for a scribe at a common service centre should be deprived of one, that students unable to submit their answer sheets could sit a physical exam, and that the university should provide reading material to visually impaired students, LiveLaw reported. The same bench had asked the university to say when it would declare results for the online open book exam.
Two of those August directions bore directly on students with plans beyond Delhi. Students who sat the open book exam and wanted to join a postgraduate course at the university were to be granted provisional admission, and the university was to tell the court whether it could issue digital certificates after the exam. The court had also been unhappy with the university’s preparation: Justice Hima Kohli noted that the figures from the second mock test were worse than those from the first, LiveLaw reported, and the university’s counsel told the bench that students would be able to submit answer sheets either through the examination portal or as an email attachment.
On 12 October 2020, the bench of Justices Hima Kohli and Subramonium Prasad disposed of the petitions. In that order the university undertook to declare the final undergraduate and postgraduate results by 31 October, and the court directed it to upload mark sheets on its website, adding that “no student should be asked to physically come for collecting them”, according to a PTI report carried by Careers360. The court had earlier asked the university and its examiners to speed up evaluation and declare results preferably by the first week of October.
Since then: results landed by December
The deadline slipped, but not by much. When 31 October passed with results still pending, the petitioner filed an application in the disposed matter arguing that the university had breached the 12 October order, and pressing in particular for the final year LLB mark sheets. On 2 December 2020, the university told the bench that results of all regular postgraduate and undergraduate courses examined through the open book mode had been declared, including the LLB final year, with mark sheets to go on its website within two days, according to the same PTI report.
For the students aspiring to study abroad who had raised the issue in September, the answer came in stages: the university’s offer of confidential results for those seeking letters of assurance, and then the general declaration through October and November. The open book examination case that began as a dispute over whether the exams could be held at all ended, in the Delhi High Court, as a dispute over how quickly the results reached students.
