OU students protest for exam delay

Student groups in Osmania University who held agitations for a separate Telangana state staged a dharna on the university campus demanding the postponement of semester examinations that are scheduled to start from Tuesday. Hundreds of students held a protest rally from the campus to the Vice-Chancellor’s lodge on Monday with the demand to postpone the semester examinations.

Students said that the they will not appear for the examinations until the Centre declares a time frame for the formation of a separate state. Several student groups are on padayatras and rallies in the Telangana region and are citing it as a reason to postpone the exams. As a few students tried to barge into the Vice-Chancellor’s lodge, there was a mild lathi charge and a few students were injured.

“We are going on a rally from Monday and we can't write the exams. We also don’t want the university to conduct exams until the Centre accepts the formation of separate state,” said Mr Krishank, a law student and member of the OU joint action committee, who is on a padayatra.

The university semester exams have been postponed four times in the last one- and-a-half month due to the Telangana agitation, and the Vice-Chancellor, Prof Tirupati Rao, said that the exams will be conducted from Tuesday as further delay will cost the students an academic year. “If we postpone the exams further, about 40,000 students will lose their academic year,” he said.