Students start online petition to cancel exams (Express Photo by Amit Mehra/ Representational image)

As the Maharashtra government has decided to cancel university level examinations barring the final year, students are demanding cancellation of the latter, too. Some of them have got together to start a petition at change.org to back their plea, stating that students are facing mental stress and lack of resources, while raising concerns of travel amid the pandemic. “Even if social distancing is maintained during the exam, students might gather together before and after the exam,” read the petition.

Since Maharashtra is one of the most affected areas in India with 19063 cases and 731 deaths due to the coronavirus, the final year students are demanding to postpone or even cancel their exams. Several students took to Twitter to voice their grievances –

Mumbai is in the RED zone, so According to UGC guideline No.5 intermediate students can be promoted based on previous year. But According to the MU,
TY students are immune to Corona. #MumbaiUniversityexams

— Ishtiyak Surve (@iam_surve) May 9, 2020

— Deepak pabale (@deepak_pabale) May 8, 2020

#PromoteFinalYearStudents#mumbaiuniversityexams As final year students we have given maximum semesters,if you can promote FY and SY on the basis of a few semesters,why not us?plus the scores of all the semesters will be tallied,so it’s not that this sem was the most important

— Avinash Yadav (@avinash_yadavv) May 8, 2020

The decision was in the line with the University Grants Commission, which had directed institutes to opt for exams in July for final year students and pass the rest on internal assessment.

While the recommendations by the UGC also suggests that if a condition does not improve in an area, there can be alternative measures including awarding 50 per cent marks to internal assessment and 50 per cent to last year’s performance.