JNU viva pass marks in practice for decades

NEW DELHI: A day after teachers accused the Jawaharlal Nehru University of imposing minimum pass marks in viva-voce despite not approving it in the academic council, the university on Tuesday maintained that the policy is being followed in the university for decades.

On Tuesday, the university issued a statement on this issue and said as per the UGC rules, 2016, candidates have to sit for written examination that will be of qualifying nature. Those who would get minimum 50% of marks may be called for a viva voce test for final selection.

“As per the decade-long policy of JNU, the minimum cutoff marks for final selection is 40% score for general candidates, 36% score for OBC candidates and 30% for other reserved candidates. The policy provides relaxation of marks for reserved categories of students,” said Chintamani Mahapatra, JNU rector.

The JNU teachers’ association had on Monday alleged that during a recent AC meeting, the minutes of standing committee on admissions was approved which said that the earlier policy of having minimum cutoff in interview was to be discontinued for aca- demic session 2018-19.

The JNU Registrar has circulated a corrigendum on 22 December 2017 saying that the point was modified but was left out inadvertently. The corrigendum said the AC decided to continue to apply pass marks for the viva voce -40% for general, 36% for OBC, and 30% for SC/ST/PH.

“In fact no discussion on this agenda item was allowed, as the vice-chancellor pronounced the matter sub judice,” the JNUTA president Ayesha Kidwai said.

The JNUTA said, “How can a new criterion be announced when the admission policy/prospectus had no indication that a pass mark was to be applied at the level of the viva voce?.”

For the academic session 2018-19, the entrance tests were held in December and around 1.15 lakh students appeared for different courses.