The 73 students expelled from IIT Roorkee in mid-June, have finally been readmitted to the first year of BE. The admission process started yesterday and students have 5 days until 10th August to deposit their fees, while lectures are scheduled to begin from Monday. Many of these students have worked rigorously in CBSE and JEE to attain a high rank. Then what is the reason for these students failing to achieve the minimum required CGPA? An investigation about what factors caused such an issue has led to manifold conclusions.

Other IITs in India give students 2 years (i.e. 2 attempts) to pass each year of BE. However, in Roorkee this option is only allowed for 4th year students, while students in the other years are expelled after the first attempt itself. Besides, the relative marking system used in IITs is not an absolute measure of a student’s calibre. If student scores are not sufficiently spread out, the system can be extremely sensitive to small changes in numerical scores. Hence, it’s difficult to know the overall score of the class and judge the competence of the failed students. Also, this marking system is common to all IITs and yet, the expulsion rate in the previous years has been quite low.

94% of the expelled students are from vernacular medium with English as their second language. Although the institute runs on-campus summer slow track classes, the students are still not satisfied. “We are only taught basic grammar here which we already learnt in school and college. What we need is to know the English translation of scientific terminology,” says one of the expelled students from the SC category. While this may be true, there are some other SC/ST students in the same batch who have passed their exams with high CGPAs. Besides, not all IITs provide English training to students on campus. Despite that, students cope with the teaching pace. So is language indeed such a prominent barrier? And how does this reason apply to the general category students who have failed? It could be possible that students take too much pride in being an IITian and thus get laid back when preparing for exams. But this cannot be made an excuse to default on college rules.

Professors and directors of IIT Roorkee maintain that parents were asked to sign a declaration during admission on the basis of which the expulsion was justified. However, students and parents claim that the declaration did not mention the minimum CGPA required to pass. On speaking to the professors and the registrar of the institute, it has been clarified that the declaration simply stated that any student not abiding to the rules of the university will be asked to leave. Along with that a separate rulebook was furnished to each student. The point to note here is that how a CGPA of 5 (50%) in an IIT is the satisfactory level for so many students. It reiterates the fact that students do not aim for a good score, but simply to pass or survive the exams. JEE rankers adopting mediocre mentalities is not a valid reason to justify anything.

This issue of student expulsion in Roorkee, despite all student union protests, does not put any one specific party in fault. Some other aspects of the system and mediocre student mentality are responsible for such travails. The issue here is not about implementing new laws, but about giving students adequate time to adjust to them. At the same time getting admission in an IIT in not just for namesake, but for students to also work harder at bringing out their best. This issue wouldn’t have exploded to such proportions if students took their IIT seats as a privileged education rather than just a survival task.