10 January,2014 07:31 AM IST | | Niranjan Medhekar
With all eyes on the University of Pune's (UoP) law faculty after a first-year law student committed suicide after failing his semester exams, it has come to light that a dearth of permanent teachers may have hampered the quality of the exam evaluation process
Indian Law Society (ILS) Law College
Saumitra Dhoble, a 19-year-old student of ILS, Pune, committed suicide at his home in Nagpur on Saturday after scoring low marks in the examinations, the same day his first semester results were out.
MiD DAY had earlier reported on how the suicide raised questions about the evaluation procedure, with various students expressing doubts on the quality of the answer sheet checking.
In the eye of the storm: Indian Law Society's (ILS) Law College
It is believed that after every varsity exam around 55,000 answer sheets of law have to be evaluated, but the quality of checking takes a hit due to the non-availability of permanent teachers.
"In the jurisdiction of University of Pune, including Ahmednagar and Nashik districts there are around 17 law colleges. Every semester exam generates around 55 to 57,000 answer sheets," said Vaijayanti Joshi, principal, Indian Law Society's (ILS) Law College.
Expressing her concern over the number of teachers assigned to evaluate these many answer sheets, she said, "Rather than appointing full time faculty these days, many non-grant colleges prefer to call guest lecturers by appointing just one or two teachers on permanent basis.
As the temporary faculty cannot check university exam papers, the load transfers on the few permanent teachers. To meet the deadline, sometimes even inexperienced teachers also given responsibility of evaluating the answer sheets."
Joshi, however, maintained her stand that without having adequate proof regarding the alleged flaws in varsity's evaluation system, there is no point in making baseless allegations. "ILS Law College has already formed fact-finding committee by appointing some college students to it, and will soon submit their report to UoP exam department," she added.
UoP's law faculty dean Dr Rashid Sheikh refuses to provide any information regarding the number of permanent teachers in law colleges.
"There is no shortage of teachers. You please contact the controller of examination for further information," he said.
Ruckus at UoP
Some 15 members of Socialist Yuvajan Sabha (SYS) entered the cabin of UoP Controller of Examination Dr Sampada Joshi last morning, protesting and holding the department responsible for the death of the law student. "Last week, I warned Joshi about the consistent irregularities in the law courses results and demanded that UoP should immediately take back the recentlydeclared results and recheck it. But, the exam department did not adhere and unfortunately Saumitra Dhoble took his life due to his poor results, " Manoj Mane of SYS said. Joshi later assured that a detailed report regarding the issue will be submitted to Vice-Chancellor Dr W N Gade.
