SRINAGAR: Time for bunking and taking rules for a ride may be over for the college students in Kashmir with Kashmir University (KU), for the first time, going tough on those falling short of attendance.
Hundreds of first year undergraduate students will not be able to appear in their upcoming annual examination for they didn’t attend the requisite number of classes in the colleges this year.
KU has strictly disallowed the students to submit the examination forms, forcing them to either lose a year or appear in Arts subjects as private candidates.
“Every year, colleges are asked to submit attendance of their candidates, but till now it was only a bogus exercise as all students were eventually allowed to appear in the examination. But this year, we didn’t allow anyone falling short of attendance to submit the examination forms,” senior officials in KU told Kashmir Reader.
“Consequently, they will have to attend the classes next year before they can sit in the examination to go into the second year,” they said.
The development assumes significance considering that a large majority of the students in Kashmir, especially from Science streams, use colleges only as a year-saving option. They take admission in colleges, but stay home to concentrate on various Medical or Engineering entrance examinations. And only those failing to qualify the entrance tests turn to colleges at the time of examination to save one year. The lenient stance of KU had rendered irrelevant the attendance system in place in colleges to check such foul play by the students.
The new strict system is said to have resulted from the colleges’ objection to lenient stance of the varsity authorities.
“In accordance with the previous trend, the KU authorities were to allow all students in the examination. But the college principals raised objections, saying ‘KU is making mockery of the system’,” the officials said.
“As a result, the form submission process was delayed, giving students one year to make up for their missed attendance. It also became the main reason for delay in first year examination,” they added.
For now, the new strict system is being implemented upon the Science and other practical-dependent streams only, the officials said.
“The focus this year was on the students who didn’t attend practical sessions or who didn’t appear in the internal examination in the practical subjects. We gave them two options: either they can stay away from examination this year or they can switch to Arts subjects and appear in the examination as private candidates,” the officials said.
A number of Science students, it is learnt, have already abandoned the subjects of their choice and switched over to Arts subjects.
“A large number will, however, lose a year,” the officials said.
The strict system is likely to be extended to other streams from the next academic year.

Reader correspondent