MU postpones multiple law exams

MUMBAI: Amid pressure from student organisations, the University of Mumbai (MU) has postponed the law exams of the second, fourth and sixth semesters. Despite assurances, the varsity failed to declare results of the third and fifth semesters of General Law.

With the results still pending, students are worried about their previous semester's results and don’t know if they have passed or failed. In case they have fail to clear, they would also have no time for revaluation of their answer sheets. To pacify the students, MU has postponed the exams of the summer semester along with ATKT (allowed to keep term) exams.

According to the new timetable issued by the varsity, the exams of the second semester of the first year of General LLB will now commence on June 30 instead of May 22. Similarly, the semester six exam of General LLB has been pushed to June 30 from May 22, while the semester four exam of general LLB will begin on May 31  now instead of May 23.

As the timetable of the current semester has been changed, the varsity was forced to change the timetable of ATKT exams for semester one, three and five of General LLB. The new exam date for these will be held on June 25, June 26 and June 25 respectively.

Meanwhile, the student law council, a wing of the students of law, welcomed the move by the varsity.  However, it said that the MU should ensure that the law exams should not clash with the Company Secretaries (CS) exam.

Sachin Pawar, president of the student law council, said, “We appreciate the MU decision of acknowledging the grievances of over 2,000 law students. However, considering that CS exams are scheduled from June 1, our demand was that MU postpone the exams and also ensure that they do not clash with CS papers. With the current postponement, they will clash with CS exams, therefore we urge MU to forthwith initiate corrective measures to avoid clashes in exams.”

Sourabh Chandorkar, a final year student of New Law College, who is also pursuing CS examination professional programme (final year), said, “The law exam should be held after CS exam as there will be clashe between the two.”

Semester 3 law results in 2-3 days, sem 5 students have to wait for another 8 days

The students of the fifth semester of General LLB will have to wait for at least eight days more for their results as there are around 500 copies that are yet to be assessed. The result of the fifth semester may be declared by next week, while the results of the third semester will be declared in the next two or three days. The MU on Tuesday declared the results of the first semester of General LLB. It had a pass percentage of 36.26 per cent.

The pass percentage for the fifth semester of the three-year LLB/BLS (five year course) is 34.65 per cent. Mahendra Shinde, a student of final year of New College, said that the current delay in declaring results will affect the mindset and studies of law students and there will be a lot of dropouts. Moreover, the third-year students will miss job opportunities and it will also hamper preparation time for further postgraduate law courses.

Rizwan Shaikh, who is waiting for his fifth semester results, said, “I wanted to appear for CLAT but I couldn't make it as I didn’t know my fifth semester results are yet to be declared. The online assessment system, which was set up in semester four last year in April, is still continuing. Those wishing to go abroad for future studies will have to give up one year, which will not be compensated by the University.”

Vinod Malale, deputy registrar (public relations), examinations department, MU, said, “The assessment of semester three has been done and in the next two to three days, the results of the same will be announced. Five hundred scripts of the fifth semester, which have been written in Marathi, are yet to be assessed and it will take around five to six days to complete it.”