Shashi Tharoor writes to DU Vice Chancellor seeking review of weightage policy

New Delhi: Congress leader and former MoS in Union HRD ministry Shashi Tharoor has sought Delhi University Vice Chancellor's intervention in reviewing the marks weightage policy for state board students seeking admission to its colleges.

The letter to the VC Dinesh Singh, has come in wake of a student delegation approaching Tharoor contending that the anomalies in calculation of weightages have robbed them off getting admission to undergraduate programmes.

"Following our conversation I explained to the student's delegation that the marks-weightage policy applied to students from several states could not be altered.

"But as the their representation explains, there is a problem relating to the interpretation of the rules and different calculations of the weightage differential at different admissions centres. Please have it reviewed so that an injustice is not perpetrated," Tharoor said in an email to the VC last week.

The students have pointed out that candidates who have passed out from Kerala State Education Board are facing a deduction of 10 per cent in best of four subjects' marks.

According to the university guidelines, all the discipline subjects must have at least 70 per cent component of theory in the qualifying exam for the purpose of being treated as academic/elective subject.

Hence, students who have passed from boards, which do not have the 70:30 ratio of theory and practical respectively, will attract a penalty of 10 per cent.

Even as the varsity had announced to do away with the additional eligibility criteria from this year, the students have also alleged in their representation that when they approached different colleges for admission, their percentage calculation was different in each of them.

"There is no centralised system to monitor the admission process and since multiple admissions are happening, there is no choice to select a particular college since at the same time admission process are completing in different colleges," the representation reads.

However, the university officials have maintained that the guidelines have been framed keeping larger interest for students in mind.

"The university has a cosmopolitan nature and the guidelines have been framed as such to provide a level playing field to students from boards across the country," a senior varsity official said.