Yuva Sena moves SC against Centre’s decision to hold final year exams

The Shiv Sena’s youth wing, Yuva Sena filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court on Saturday against the Centre’s decision to hold final year examinations for colleges and universities in September amid the Covid-19 pandemic .

“Today Yuva Sena has filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court with a humble prayer to save lives of lakhs of students, teachers, non teaching staff and their families by asking the UGC to not be stubborn about enforcing examinations when India has crossed the 10 lakh cases mark,” tweeted Maharashtra environment minister Aaditya Thackeray who heads the Yuva Sena.

He also described the decision of the University Grants Commissions’ (UGC) “bizarre”.

“The petition is for each and every student across the country, being forced to appear for an examination in an absolutely bizarre judgement of the situation by UGC and non flexibility when it comes to human safety.”

In another tweet, he said if students still feel the need to appear for an examination, they voluntarily may do so in a post-Covid scenario.

“We believe that academic excellence can’t be judged by 1 examination and for academic excellence, we must calculate the aggregate marks of the past semesters. Beyond which, if students still feel the need to appear for an examination, they voluntarily may do so post-Covid,” he said.

Varun Desai, Yuva Sena’s secretary, in a video released on Saturday said that despite writing letters to the UGC and the ministry of human resource development, they have not received any replies. Desai said, “Maharashtra government has already cancelled the final year examinations and we want that decision to be taken for the entire country. In the last 10-15 days, we have received messages from lakhs of students seeking our support in this.”

The Congress, a coalition partner in the Shiv Sena-led government in Maharashtra also supported the decision.

Satyajeet Tambe, president of the Maharashtra State Youth Congress said that they support the decision. He tweeted, “Conducting exams in the background of the #COVID__19 is the culmination of insensitivity).”