Only final year students in Karnataka’s degree, postgraduate, diploma and engineering colleges have to appear for their exams, Deputy Chief Minister Dr CN Ashwath Narayan said on Friday.
The Deputy CM, who holds the portfolio of Higher Education along with other departments, stated that all the other students will be allowed to attend classes of the next year based on their internal marks and performance in the previous semester for the 2019-20 academic year.
The minister also said that the next semester will begin in September and all institutions have been told to make necessary changes to conduct classes, both on online and offline modes.
It was also announced that the Karnataka-Common Entrance Test will be held on July 30 and 31 as announced by the department earlier.
Sources in the department said that this decision came after detailed deliberations and discussions that the department held with academics and vice-chancellors of many universities in the state. The recommendations and guidelines of the University Grants Commission (UGC) were also complied with.
Earlier, it was reported that to make this happen, the permission of the Governor, who is the Chancellor of all the state universities, has to be taken as well.
It may be recalled that schools, colleges and universities have been shut since mid-March with the statewide restrictions put in place as part of the COVID-19 induced lockdown.
As a result, the ongoing pre-university (PU-II) exams which were being held at that time had to be postponed, with only the English exam being left to be held. The English paper exam was held on June 18, close to three months after the scheduled date of examination.
Even the Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) examinations in Karnataka which were to be held soon after the conclusion of the PU-II exams had to be delayed due to the lockdown imposed in a bid to curb the spread of COVID-19.