PU online exams: Delay at rural colleges in Ludhiana on Day 1 due to network issues

The online examination at several PU-affiliated colleges in rural areas, which was scheduled to start at 9am on Thursday, was delayed as many colleges downloaded the question paper late amid connectivity issues.

This forced many colleges to give extra time to students to attempt the two-hour paper and send the answer-sheets in PDF format in the next two hours.

After receiving the question papers via WhatsApp groups, many students called their teachers to know which questions to attempt. There were a total of 14 questions, of which the first six were short-answer type. The rest were long answers.

Due to poor connectivity in rural areas, a large number of students reached their respective colleges to submit the hard copy of their answer-sheet.

GTB College, Dakha, did not receive the question paper from the university till 9.45 am.

Officiating principal, Avtar Singh, said, “We finally downloaded the question paper from PU’s website. The students were also confused after receiving the question paper and contacted teachers to know how many questions were to be attempted. Over 12 students of final-year submitted the answer-sheets to the college in an envelope as they could not upload the PDF online.”

Due to connectivity problems, the authorities of government college, Karamsar, could download only 30 out of 160 answer-sheets sent by students till 4 pm.

At Gobind College, Narangwal, the authorities downloaded the paper at 8.56 am instead of 8.40 am due to connectivity issues.

Kuldeep Batta, district president of PCCTU, said, “Due to connectivity issues, we downloaded the question paper 16 minutes late. The university has asked students to attempt 50% of the questions of their choice, but many students contacted their course teachers to know which were to be attempted, and wasted a lot of time.”

The university opted for online mode to conduct exams for final-semester students due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Many academicians have stated that the varsity should have organised physical exams or marked them on the basis of aggregate marks scored by them in previous semesters.

College forcing students to submit hard copies of answer-sheets: Parents

Several parents have alleged that authorities of Ramgarhia Girls College, Miller Ganj, have asked students to submit hard copy of the answer-sheet to the college after the exam.

Principal Inderjeet Kaur denied the allegations and said, “Today was the first online exam and we have asked the students not to panic if they can’t send the answer-sheet in PDF format. Few parents and students submitted the hard copy of the answer-sheet to the college today as they were unable to send it online. For the next exam, we have informed the students to learn how to convert the pages of the answer- sheet into a PDF.”