Delhi University may resume physical classes, govt-run varsities to go offline too

Following Friday’s Delhi Disaster Management Authority meeting, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said that all higher educational institutions, colleges, ITIs, polytechnic and skill institutes will be directed to only conduct offline classes from next week. This means that Delhi government-run campuses such as Ambedkar University, Delhi Technological University, colleges under Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University will be opening their campuses for physical classes for all their students.

Crucially, an education department official said that the requirement for institutes to maintain 50% of classroom or laboratory capacity at any given time will be done away with. So far, Delhi University officials have been citing the DDMA’s 50% requirement as the primary reason for it not having resumed offline theory classes since the start of the pandemic.

Vice-Chancellor Yogesh Singh told The Indian Express that the university will be examining the possibility of reopening with this change. “We will examine the guidelines and if it enables re-opening without any conditions, we will certainly reopen. Since we have students from all around the country, if we find that we can reopen, we would want to give them some notice period – perhaps 7, 10 or 15 days,” he said, stating that the university would look at restarting physical classes for students of all years.

So far, the limited reopening of the university has been restricted to access to the library and to laboratories for practicals for final-year students, while all theory classes have been held online throughout the pandemic.

While JNU authorities did not respond to queries on its reopening plans, those at Jamia Millia Islamia said that it will wait for directions from the University Grants Commission.

“We will wait for UGC guidelines and instructions, following which the Executive Council will take a decision accordingly on this,” said PRO Ahmed Azeem.

Anshu Kumar said that while the university is still awaiting the DDMA’s order, they have begun preparing the campus for reopening. “We need to see the order to know exactly what is expected of us but regardless, we have begun sanitising the campus for reopening and we will abide by the guidelines and directives issued by the government,” she said.