The resumption of offline classes for the second-year undergraduate and first-year postgraduate students of IIEST has been deferred again, to April 18, as hostels are yet to be ready, said an official of the Shibpur institute.
This is the second time in the past month that the start of the offline classes has been pushed back.
“….it is further to inform that currently the classes of the 4th semester undergraduate and 2nd semester postgraduate courses shall be continued in online mode. The offline classes of these courses shall commence from 18.04.2022,” says a notice signed by the institute’s deputy registrar (academic), Nirmalya Bhattacharyya.
Repeated calls to IIEST director Parthasarathi Chakrabarti went unanswered.
IIEST had announced that in-person classes on the residential campus would resume on March 22. But it later said in-person classes for the second-year undergraduate and first-year postgraduate students would resume on April 4 because hostels were in disrepair.
Now, the resumption has been pushed further to April 18.
Students at the institute said that if the IIEST authorities were unable to resolve the accommodation problem for all, they must not insist on holding the exams in-person.
The students had last week demanded that end-semester exams, scheduled for early May, be held online.
Harshbardhan Singh, general secretary of the IIEST students’ senate, said the institute must ensure hostel accommodation for all students if it wanted to hold the exams on the campus.
“We will raise the issue at a meeting of the senate likely to be held this week,” he said.
Students from the department of computer science and engineering have written to IIEST director Parthasarathi Chakrabarti, raising the issue of accommodation and demanding that the exams be held online.
“Many 3rd year and 4th year students… are not getting hostel accommodation now, and they have to search for PG outside campus, which is a very difficult and financially troublesome task, as rent of PG can't be included in education loan amount…. Many hostels are in very bad condition with no renovation work done in the past 2 years,” the letter said.
The students are also citing the decisions of IIT Kharagpur and certain NITs, including NIT Raipur, to conduct exams for the current semester online.
