Nara Lokesh suggests caution on semester exams

Mangalagiri: TDP national general secretary and MLC Nara Lokesh on Tuesday urged Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy to consider the opinions of students and the respective institutions before going ahead with the offline semester examinations amid the threat of coronavirus third wave. He wrote a letter to the Chief Minister, saying that over 17 lakh students would have to take these exams and it would trigger severe complications among the youth if the third wave became a reality. Right now, the rate of infections came down because of the cancellation of exams for the school students. A considered decision should be taken on conducting semester exams.

Stressing the need for caution, Lokesh said, "AP has more than 3,500 institutions of higher learning, including 53 universities and thousands of colleges and stand alone institutions, catering to more than 17 lakh students in regular and distance-learning modes. The average positivity rate in AP has been brought below 5 per cent in June, through cancelling school exams and Covid-appropriate behaviour by the people ensured. Should we risk these hard-fought gains by having exams for lakhs of college-going students?"

Lokesh recalled that exams for most students in pre-final years were cancelled last year in AP and other states. Most of our students have not been vaccinated yet. The risk of a third wave infecting the younger population through the more deadly Delta variants is also quite high.

He said that students have already begun protesting in Kerala, Karnataka and Telangana regarding the conduct of exams. Let us act before our students are forced to take the protest route themselves, he said.