All hail to the coronavirus, for messing up the whole ecosystem of the world. It has been quite difficult to handle the outbreak without serious measures. And one of these serious measures was shutting down all the colleges and schools to keep the virus from spreading.

Not to forget the fact that this is the period infamous for most of the major exams in the country. This leads to widespread chaos among students about when the exams will happen.

Maharashtra is one of the states to get the worst affected by the novel coronavirus. Which means it would be quite a while before the spread is contained and finally stopped, hence it was quite a nightmare for the students of Maharashtra.

Now the state government has taken care of this issue. The education minister of Maharashtra, Ms. Varsha Gaikwad has recently made an announcement that all students in the universities, with the exception of final year students, will be directly promoted to the next academic year, without any exams.

Though, final year students will be required to appear for the exams which will be conducted between 1^st July 2020 to 30^th July 2020. The announcement was made during a Facebook live session held by the department of education of the government of Maharashtra.

It was also made clear that in case of extension of the lockdown period during June, it will lead to another meeting for deciding the further actions. The detailed guidelines pertaining to promoting college students in the 1^st year and 2^nd year will be formulated as per the recommendations of UGC.

It will be based on a 50%-50% gradation formula wherein 50% marks will comprise of the performance of the student in the internals including projects in the ongoing semester while the remaining 50% will comprise of the performance of the student in the previous semester.

Though, Samant made an important clarification that students with an Allowed to Keep Term remark for any of the subjects in previous semesters will for now be promoted to the next semester. But they will have to appear for the exam and clear it within 120 days of the commencement of the academic year.

He also added that if necessary then the exam will be cut short time from 3 hours to 2 hours or make the maximum marks to 50 instead of 100 and 80 marks. But universities are left free to design their own regulations as long as they obey the safety norms.

He further informed that Directorate of Technical Education and CET Officials are presently preparing the new schedule and it will be shared with the students as and when the schedule is ready.

Moreover, the Directorate of Medical Education and Research, Maharashtra has informed that all exams for medical and dental students have now been postponed till 15^th June 2020.

This was quit a relief for students of Maharashtra since they were not left hanging in the mid-air and can now start their preparations accordingly.

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Source: Hindustan Times