Vehement protest by disqualified students of the Calcutta University rocked the College Street campus in the morning today even as the state education minister, Mr Partha Chatterjee, met the senior officials of the university to assess the cause behind poor results in Part-I examination. Thousands of students gathered inside the university today and sealed both the entrances.

The students said that since the colleges were not well-versed with the new 2016 regulation, where students had to clear two out of three general paper, it has to be scrapped. Merely 43 per cent students managed to pass this year’s examination, the results of which was declared last Thursday. “We want justice.

We scored very well in our honours paper with 60 per cent marks but even after this, we are not getting promoted just because we did not score well in two of the general papers. This would cause a major setback. The hardwork which we invested for the honours paper is a complete waste now. This situation has compelled a young girl from New Alipore College to take her life,” said Rahul Mehta, a Hindi honours student. “We have already started classes for the second year and paid the fees too.

We also received the new identity cards for the next year, but me and my classmates are not getting promoted,” said one of the agitating students of VidyaSagar College. “This agitation will continue unless the authorities, especially the vice-chancellor, accept our demands. If they do not do so, we will continue with the protest,” said Sumana Chaudhury, a Sanskrit honours student.

The state education minister seemed visibly annoyed at the ongoing agitation of the students while emerging from the meeting with the university officials. He condemned the action of the agitating students. “They will not study and expect to get pass marks. We know that a group of outsiders are also behind the protest.

We are also keeping a tab of such outsider interference.” Agitating students, however, claimed that there are no outsiders among them. Simultaneously, students’ political units in CU said that the agitating students do not have any political colour. However, student leaders of Trinamul Chhatra Parisad said that many of the agitators are from nearby colleges, who are active student leaders. The state education minister had called authorities of the university after reports came out of drastic fall in the pass percentage of candidates in the BA Part-I examination.

However, if the held back students will be promoted, was the topic of discussion in the meeting. Emerging from the meeting with the minister, the pro vice-chancellor (academic) said that the university will convene a Syndicate meeting where the matter will be placed, “We have submitted our report clarifying why there was a drop in the number of successful candidates. However, the decision will be made after the Syndiacte meeting is convened.” The minister said: “We heard what the authorities had to say.

However, students who do not study should not be promoted,” adding that the decision is to be taken by the university as the government “does not want to interfere in academic matters”. University sources said that a second chance may be given to these held back students after they appear in special supplementary examination.

Additionally, the 2016 regulation may also be amended. About 450 students who have high first class in their honours papers are not being promoted as they could not clear their general papers.