On behalf of the final year students of the faculty of engineering and technology, Agra College, Agra (Affiliated to Dr A P J Abdul Kalam Technical University, Lucknow), I am writing this to let everyone know about the injustice that happened to us.
It all started in April 2016, when it was time for our annual college function, KALRAV. The college cultural committee (which comprises of faculty members) ordered a mandatory contribution of ₹350 for the function. Only those who paid up would be able to attend the function. As the majority of students were not ready to contribute to the function (lack of placements, the poor state of the laboratories, poor academic environment, and unjust behaviour of the college administration being just some of the reasons), the cultural committee members began forcing the students to pay up. They stated, “If you don’t (pay), we will deduct 10 marks from the subject ‘General Proficiency’.”
During this time, the principal of the college was Dr Manoj Kumar Rawat, whose appointment was cancelled by the Supreme Court of India on July 15, 2016.
It was around July 20, 2016, that our semester results were out, and to our shock, we found that our marks had actually been deducted. About 120 out of the 265 students enrolled in the current B-Tech course had their marks deducted because they hadn’t paid for the function. The ones who had paid received marks between 45 to 50 on average, but the ones who did only received marks between 30 to 35 (out of 50). This deduction resulted in a variation of 2-3% on the overall result of each student affected by it.
Meanwhile, the newly appointed principal, Narendra Singh Yadav, constituted a committee which found that half of the engineering faculty staff had no appointment letters. No advertisement had been released for appointments.
On September 14, 2016, the principal was made aware of the marks deduction issue through an application duly signed by the 120 students affected by this. He constituted a committee to probe into the matter and assured us that suitable action would be taken within 15 days
A month passed, and all we got was just this one reply, “Committee is examining the issue, will let you know.”
On October 27, 2016, we presented our grievance, through letters, to the divisional commissioner and the district magistrate of Agra, as they were the president and vice-president respectively of the board of trustees. But we got no reply from them as well.
On November 11, 2016, after a telephone conversation with the district magistrate of Agra, we submitted the same list at his camp office at his demand. He assured us that he would take some action. But nothing changed.
On November 27, 2016, we met the district magistrate in person at his office, where he called the principal and ordered him to resolve the issue as early as possible. This grievance was then registered on the Jan Sunwai Portal (Integrated Grievance Redressal System, Govt. of Uttar Pradesh ). Again, nothing changed – the status of our grievance changed to ‘resolved’ in 10 days – without any actual action being taken on the ground.
On March 21, 2017, Narendra Singh Yadav was removed as the principal of Agra College, as he was found to be unfit for the post, and Dr A K Gupta became the new principal of our college. Once again, we made our new principal aware about the state of our grievance, but he was not interested in looking into this issue. He told us, “I don’t know the procedures to be followed to bring your marks back. If you know, then tell me. I can’t spend so much effort in pursuing this issue. You are free to pursue it to any level you want.”
On April 25, 2017, we told the additional divisional commissioner (administration) of Agra about the issue. He passed an order to the present principal – to submit a report on the actions taken regarding this issue at the commissioner’s office within 7 days. Yet, no such report has been submitted till date.
It has been more than 8 months now since we started pursuing this. Absolutely no move has been made to resolve it till date. The college administration is just waiting for the issue to blow over, and wasting our time in the process.
Our final semester exams are round the corner, starting from May 12, 2017. Once our marks are finalised by the university for the last time, it will be much more difficult to correct them.
We demand strict and immediate action on this issue. No more assurances and misdirections! They have played with our future, just for the sake of some currency notes. Few things can be darker than this.
When will we be getting our marks back?