In spite of facing retaliation for making attendance compulsory for the students, Jawaharlal Nehru University has now decided to implement the same rule on the teachers as well. The Academic Council (AC) met on Friday, July 13, to discuss the same and decided to introduce the biometric attendance system for teachers. Apart from this, the students will be required to sign an undertaking while registering for their course, stating that they would abide by the university’s attendance rules. The Academic Council also approved the decision of holding purely online entrance examinations from the next academic session onwards.
The Dean of the School of Arts & Aesthetics, Kavita Singh and the JNU Students’ Union were barred from attending the AC meeting on Friday owing to their alleged violation of discipline in previous meetings. This led to a protest by the JNU Students’ Union (JNUSU) outside the venue and by the JNU Teachers’ Association (JNUTA), who wore black clothes to mark Singh’s exclusion from the meeting. Rector I Chintamani Mahapatra told IE that the university has already implemented attendance rules for both the students and the administrative staff and through the 146th Academic Council meeting, the same was implemented for the teaching staff as well. The faculty was required to mark their attendance at least once in a day. He also said that the attendance would be marked in biometric form.
However, the President of JNUTA, Sonajharia Minz, said that the matter was not a part of the agenda item and the announcement was passed by the Vice Chancellor at the last moment. The VC discussed working out a biometric system of attendance for the students when a faculty member jokingly asked ‘how about the faculty’, following which the VC passed his verdict. Minz said that there was ‘no scope for dissent’ during that time.
Also, in order to make the evaluation in examination ‘more fair and transparent’, the Academic Council also made it mandatory that all teachers were required to show corrected answer scripts of all exams to students before finalising their marks.
