Students turn up for exam, varsity hasn’t printed paper

Anahita Mukherji | TNN

Mumbai: Here’s a scene straight out of the theatre of the absurd. On Monday morning, hundreds of Mumbai University students arrived at examination venues across the city to take their MA Part I examinations in two subjects—History of China and History of South-East Asia. They settled in and waited endlessly for the exam to begin, but it didn’t—because the question papers had not been printed.

“I turned up at the exam centre on time for the paper which was to be held at 10.30 in the morning,’’ said a student, adding that she waited for half an hour as she did not know what was going on. “Even the supervisors at our centre had no clue as to why the papers had not arrived. They even handed out answer papers, on which we wrote our names and roll numbers,’’ said another student.

The supervisors eventually called up the university to find out what the problem was. The students left the exam hall when the peons told them that the papers had been postponed. “I was really tense as I had studied very hard for the paper. This was a most unsettling experience,’’ said a student appearing for the History of China paper. She added that this was to have been her last paper.

Mumbai University controller of examinations Vilas Shinde admitted that papers for the two subjects had not been printed.