NIT Durgapur has announced that end-term exams would not be held for the first, second and third-year BTech students because of the Covid-19 pandemic and they would be judged by their class performance and marks in previous exams.

The institute had earlier announced a similar evaluation system for the fourth-year graduating students.

“There is no certainty on when the campus will reopen and a large number of students do not have internet connection at home, without which online assessment cannot be done. So, the institute is going for this mode of assessment,” said an official of the Durgapur institute.

Details of the assessment were mentioned in a notification issued on June 19.

The notification says assessment for theory papers of the second and third year students students will be done by giving 60 per cent weightage on the “previous performance”.

It said 25 per cent weightage would be given on the performance of the mid-term examinations of the current semester.

According to an official of the institute, 15 per cent weightage would be given on continuous assessment of performance before the lockdown.

Since first-year students have attended just one semester, they will be evaluated for their theory papers on the basis of 60 per cent weightage on mid-term performance.

The official said 25 per cent weightage would be given on the first semester grade point average and the rest on continuous assessment of performance before the lockdown.

NIT director Anupam Basu told The Telegraph: “We have evolved the mechanism to do away with the uncertainty and anxiety of the students and the guardians.... The mechanism takes into account the past performance and the ‘till date’ performance of the students. Special care has been taken to ensure that the students are not adversely affected”.

The institute had in April carried out a survey on Net access among students. After going through the students’ feedback, the authorities realised that 45-50 per cent of its BTech and postgraduate students either did not have a computer or live in places with poor Net connectivity.

Basu, a professor of computer science and engineering at IIT Kharagpur who is on lien to helm the Durgapur institute, had flagged his concern over last-mile connectivity and the resultant digital divide coming in the way of online classes in an article he had written for Metro on April 10.

The notice issued by the dean (academic) at NIT Durgapur says: “If a student is not satisfied with the results thus calculated, he may exercise the option of foregoing the results and appear for regular method of examination, which may be held only after the pandemic situation normalises. In such a situation, the student has to appear in all the theory subjects in that semester on reopening of the institute and the result thus obtained will replace the earlier one with no option of reverting back.”