NU students seek refund of exam fees worth crores

Nagpur: Nagpur University students and senate members have sought refund of exam fee for Summer 2020. The students had paid fee ranging between Rs200 to Rs2000 in January while many had also paid late and super late fees up to Rs4,000 by Feb-March this year.
As the regular exams were never conducted due to Covid-19 outbreak, they feel the university didn’t have to pay for invigilation, answersbooks, exam centre, photocopying of question mark and other facilities needed in offline mode.
Interestingly, the NU won’t even need to pay for valuation works as it is holding MCQ on a software, they said. They pointed out that the software ‘RTMNU Pariskha’ is claimed to have been developed and made available by private agency Promarc “free of cost”.
“The university may deduct clerkage and some more amount but it must either refund or adjust the money in the next exam,” they said.
NU exam director of examinations Prafulla Sabale ruled out refund of exam fee. “Pre and post exam work had been going on. Paper setting was done, college got renumerated for ex-students’ exam, 70% of answerbook and question papers were printed, so money was utilized to a large extent,” he said.
Sabale said the university is not commercial entity. “Students fee is spent on students only. We charge Rs275 for science and Rs230 for arts though university spends much more,” he said.
Senate members Manmohan Bajpai and Sarita Nimbarte said the Graduates constituency is of the view is that 50% fee must be refunded. “No offline exam has been held. Printing was not done. We had raised the issue during last senate meeting,” said Bajpai.
Fee
Arts--- Rs230
Science – Rs 275
Engineering Rs – 2000
Late fee – Rs100 to Rs10,000 or more
Expenses
Exam centre is paid per examinee
Invigilator gets paid on hourly basis
Peon is paid for serving drinking water
Answerbook and question printing
Question paper setting
Evaluation of answer books