The dean of studies at Indian Statistical Institute refused to sign the marksheets of the students who graduated last year because the institute’s academic council had opposed his decision to mention on the grade cards that some exams were held online, said an official.
Sources close to the dean, Debasis Sengupta, said he had reservations about the fairness of the exams held online minus invigilation and so he wanted the mention on the marksheets.
The academic council opposed the decision as it thought it would result in unnecessary embarrassment for the students, an ISI official said.
Sengupta stuck to his ground and so the ISI authorities asked the associate deans to sign the marksheets and distribute them.
When The Telegraph contacted the dean, he sent a text message: “I do not wish to make public remarks on the matter you had inquired about.”
ISI director Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay said in a text message: “The issue being of an academic nature has been handled through our internal processes, as is usually done for all academic activities.”
Sources on the campus said the grade cards could not be distributed to the graduating students during the convocation held on the campus on March 3 because the dean refused to sign them.
An ISI official said: “Pleas to the dean from the director’s office to sign the marksheets without saying anything about the mode of examination went unheeded. After the convocation, the academic council met and made the same request to the dean. The council members said any mention about the online test would leave the students embarrassed and also pointed out that other institutions were not mentioning this on their grade cards. But the dean refused to budge.”
The batch that graduated last year wrote all end-semester exams held after March 2020 online as the campus was shut as a precaution against Covid.
Sengupta, a professor in the applied statistics division of the institution, became dean in September 2020 for two years.
A teacher said the dean had even proposed that the institute appoint someone in his place for an early end to the impasse.
Doubts about the fairness of the online examinations have led to debates across campuses.
In March, IIT Kharagpur had decided to hold the end-semester exams offline following complaints that some students had been adopting unfair means during online tests. After the students protested, the institute had to allow the students the option of writing the exams online.
