Nagpur: Bringing some relief for the aggrieved final year students, the Nagpur University has decided to conduct re-exam of those who couldn’t appear on Thursday or faced troubles while submitting papers.
The Vodafone-Idea (Vi) network crash on Thursday and its cascading effect on other networks led to majority of over 23,000 examinees facing one or other issues during all four phases of MCQ tests. NU was forced to reschedule the last phase of pharmacy exams due to congestion.
The VI network normalized by Thursday night but had the problem persisted, the NU administration planned to postpone the exams by a couple of days on the lines of Pune University. The plan was dropped after the university successfully conducted a cancelled pharmacy paper on Friday without much issues.
“We have asked college principals to contact their students to know whether they faced any troubles on Thursday. Those who want to reappear can submit an application to their principals. We will also verify from our server whether their claims are genuine. We will be issuing a circular for all colleges in this regard by Saturday,” Board of Examinations and Evaluation (BoEE) director Prafulla Sable told TOI.
Though NU is yet to calculate exact numbers of students who suffered on Thursday due to a host of technical glitches, the director said that if their number was found to be over 50%-60%, the exams held on Thursday would be cancelled and NU would declare re-exam of all papers.
“We received hundreds of complaints for Marathi and science papers. Since our server was busy throughout Friday, we couldn’t retrieve that data. Once it is done, we will conduct their re-exams on the days when there would be less papers like on Friday. We have also told all principals to collect examinees’ applications and submit them to NU,” he said.
On Friday, NU conducted exams of over 20,000 students from arts, science and engineering faculties, apart from pharmacy, without any major hiccups. “We, of course, received minor complaints regarding slow connectivity from rural areas. In the morning, we received many requests for device change due to network issues of VI,” said Sable adding that over 98% students appeared for exams on Friday.
On Saturday, NU would be undergoing a real test with over 30,000 students appearing in the online exams. It included those of BBA, BCA, BSc and pharmacy among others. The NU officials are praying for smooth conduct of Saturday’s paper, as a large number of students would be affected if technical problems hit again.
# NU online exams held on Friday
Shift -------------- Faculty------------ Enrolled -------------- Appeared ----------%
1st -------------- Pharmacy --------—- 824 ---------------------- 798 --------------- 96.8
2nd ------------- Arts ----------------- 306 --------------------—-296 ---------------- 96.7
3rd ------------- Science ------------- 7,817 --------------------- 7,695 ------------- 98.4
4th ------------- Engg & Tech ------- 11,349-------------------- 11,289 ------------ 99.5
Total ------------------------------------ 20,296------------------- 20,078 ------------- 99