Tamil Nadu to promote all college students without semester exams except final year

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edapaddi K Palaniswami announced that college students will be promoted to the next semester without giving examinations for 2019-2020. Palaniswamy said that the students from Arts, Science, Engineering and various technical degree courses will be exempted from the semester examinations, except for the final year students.

“These students are exempted from writing the semester exams (May 2020). They should be awarded marks followed by UGC and AICTE guidelines,” said the Chief Minister in a statement.

The state government is yet to declare the examination schedule for final year students and details regarding the same are expected soon. The decision has been taken by a high-level 11-member panel, based on the recommendations from the University Grants Commission (UGC) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

“The high-level panel suggested that there is no possibility of conducting exams due to COVID-19 spread,” added Palaniswami.

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Details awaited for final year students

The courses for which students have been exempted from taking exams for promotion to the next academic year are -  first and second-year undergraduate and first-year postgraduate students studying in arts and science colleges; first, second and third-year undergraduate and first-year postgraduate students studying in engineering colleges and first-year MCA students.

As final year students await details on examinations, the government said that those details will be announced later. Marks for the cancelled examinations will likely be allocated on the basis of internal assessment but no formal announcement has been made. The exams were postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic but the continued rise in cases forced the government to completely scrap it.

India reported over 45,000 new cases of coronavirus and 1,129 deaths on July 22, taking the total tally of confirmed cases to over 12,38,000 and 29,861 deaths so far. It is the biggest single-day jump in coronavirus cases, overwhelming healthcare professional across the country.

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