Ranchi: The Jharkhand government has given its nod to start physical classes for colleges from Thursday but on Day 1, many constituent and affiliated colleges of the University of Ranchi have adopted both offline and online classes to avoid crowding on campus and ensure Covid-19 safety rules.
Earlier, the registrar of the university had issued a notification to all constituent and affiliated colleges to open their campus from March 1 after carrying out cleaning and sanitization work for two days. The colleges have also been directed to follow the University Grants Commission (UGC) guidelines during the classes.
However, the Ram Lakhan Singh College here has started offline classes and continued with the live streaming of the classes for those who want to attend them online.
College principal Manoj Kumar said, “To ensure social distancing norms, we have adopted a combination of offline and online classes. The classroom proceedings are being telecast live so that the students having proper facilities can join them from their homes. This will reduce the crowding inside the classrooms.”
He said students of science, arts and commerce streams are being called at different times of the day it would be difficult to maintain social distancing for all 4,500 students at a time.
Similarly, authorities of Marwari College have decided to call their students in batches while conducting the online classes. Principal U C Mehta said, “We have about 27,000 students, including both boys and girls. The campus would be packed if we call all of them at one go.”
He further said offline examinations for the fifth semester are on currently and would be followed by third-semester examinations.
Mehta added that several hand sanitizing machines have been installed on the campus, which was sanitized by the Ranchi Municipal Corporation and a private agency.
Meanwhile, Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee University vice-chancellor S N Munda said offline classes were going on smoothly in his institute. said, “We are running the classes in three shifts for our students whose strength is about 10,000.”
The Central University of Jharkhand has also decided to start offline classes in a phased manner. Professor Manoj Kumar of the university said, “The research scholars have been called first and they will be followed by post-graduate students, who require laboratory facilities. Other students will be called later on. The students have been advised not to eat from outside the campus.”