From summer exams, NU to charge subject-wise fees from failure students.

TOI: Nagpur: Saturday, February 20, 2016.

After over a decade, RTM Nagpur University finally issued the much awaited notification on reduction of examination fees for failure students. Now, NU would be charging per subject fees from the forthcoming summer exams, thus bringing a big sigh of relief for lakhs of students.

It was old demand from the students to charge per subject fees and many agitations had taken place for it, involving various students' organizations. Till winter exams, the students are charged entire fees, even if they failed in just one subject or practical/sessional.

The notification regarding "the historic" decision was issued after Management Council cleared the proposal during its recent meeting. Earlier, the proposal was cleared by the NU Academic Council last year. There was stiff opposition to NU's move from its finance section, as it would significantly reduce the varsity's revenues. Ironically, fees collected from the students is the biggest revenue for the NU, running into crores.

"We've decided to take a decision in students' favour. It was a long pending demand and genuine demand from various students' organizations. There is no point charging full fees from a the students if they fail in just one subject," pro-VC Pramod Yeole told TOI. He had raised this issue several times as a member of NU Senate and had taken the then administration to task for the injustice meted out to the students, particularly from poor strata of the society.

In past few years, there have been several protests by various student organizations like ABVP, NSUI, BJYM, CYSS and MNS's student wing. Their demands specifically cater to student friendly options like imposition of subject wise exams fees and speedy declaration of results. The CYSS activists handed over documents obtained under RTI Act to VC, having details of exam fees charged by various universities like Mumbai, Pune and Amravati. Interestingly, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi didn't charge a single penny from the failure students towards conducting exams.