Hyderabad, December 28: Students boycotted the MCA examination conducted by the Osmania University on Monday and staged a rally, under the banner of OU MCA Joint Action Committee (MCA OUJAC), on the campus demanding withdrawal of cases registered against students who participated in the Telangana movement.
The university, which postponed other postgraduate examinations, remained stubborn and refused to postpone the examinations of MCA and other professional courses.
The students demanded postponement of examinations as done in the case of PG examinations till the state government withdrew the cases registered against the students who took part in the Telangana agitation.
Out of the 8,125 students of the Osmania University and its affiliated colleges in Hyderabad, Medak, Mahaboobnagar, Nalgonda and Ranga Reddy districts, only 561 wrote the examination, according to university officials. The university and the Koti Women’s College reported cent per cent boycottt by all the 75 and 60 candidates respectively.
The boycott was complete also at the PG College, Saifabad (49 candidates) and MVS Government Degree College, Mahaboobnagar (39 candidates) with not a single student turning up to write the examination.
In Hyderabad three out of 108 at the Nizam College and one of 148 at the CBIT appeared for the examinations, taking the total percentage of students who took the examination to an all-time low of 6.95 percent.
There are 130 professional colleges affiliated to the OU and the examinations were conducted at 49 centres, 36 of which are in the city.
However, the M.Ed. examinations held in Hyderabad saw a good turnout of 219 students out of the total of 257.
After boycotting the examinations, the students gathered at the Arts College on the OU campus forcing the police to deploy additional men to prevent any untoward incident.
The entrances into the university at the NCC and the OU police station ends were heavily guarded and students were not allowed to enter the campus. RTC buses were also not allowed to ply through the campus.
Hundreds of students gathered at the Arts College and marched to the NCC gate where they were stopped by the police. The students staged a dharna for hours and then dispersed. Similar protests were held at Ibrahimpatnam and Uppal after students boycotted examinations and came out on streets staging dharnas.
The OUJAC today submitted a representation to vice-chancellor T Tirupathi Rao demanding postponement of the examinations till the cases were withdrawn. They, however, did not get any positive response from the authorities.
The OU authorities are likely to go ahead with the conduct of examinations irrespective of the students’ agitation.
-Agencies