LUCKNOW: Around 18 students of MSc (environmental science) were left in a lurch after Lucknow University decided to discontinue the course nearly a month after admission.
LU went ahead with the admission process by asking the students to appear for online counselling, submit fees and verify documents. The students had even submitted examination forms. But a recent message from the university admission cell that the course has been nixed left the students in a state of shock.
As per rules, a self-finance course can be run only if 60% of total seats are filled. In this case, there were 40 seats, of which 18 were locked by students. The students had submitted the fees and their offline verification was also done when all of a sudden on January 18 students received a message of discontinuation.
Left high and dry, the students wrote to vice-chancellor Prof Alok Kumar Rai on Saturday. When contacted, Rai said, “We had received applications fulfilling the 60% norm, but only 18 submitted the fees. Hence, we had to discontinue the course.”
Explaining the decision to nix the course after a month, he said: “We were extending the date in students’ interest, expecting that more students will be submitting the fees. When the number didn’t increase, we took the decision as per rules.”
However, the students said the varsity should have taken the decision early. They alleged that by sending the discontinuation notice in January-end, the varsity has wasted their year as admission in other institutes were completed months back and now they don’t have any options left.
Students slammed the authorities for taking the decision, when online counselling, offline verification, fee submission and even examination forms for the first semester have been filled. The LU message said, “MSc (environmental science) will be discontinued for the session 2020-21 as a minimum criterion of the number of candidates could not be fulfilled. Your admission can be shifted to MSc (plant science). Submit a request to botany head.”
The message also said that their fees will be refunded if they don’t want to switch to MSc (plant science). “It’s illogical to ask students to shift to plant science, when the counselling has been done and fees of Rs 28,680 has been submitted. Also, the examination form for the first semester has been submitted,” said Geetika Sharma (name changed).