Kochi: The darkness in the examination halls caused due to the recurring power outage continued to plague the smooth conduct of examinations for both undergraduate and postgraduate students in Maharajas College Ernakulam.
Strange enough, a "candle light" examination was held for the first-year students at the classrooms in the English Department on Thursday.
It was a re-examination as the first examination was cancelled after the students used the flash light of the mobile phones to write the examinations during power cut. After the matter was reported in "Manorama", the college cancelled the first examination which was held on April 11.
Even for the re-examination on Thursday, the same classrooms were allotted to the students by the college. Almost 20 minutes after the beginning of the examination at 10 am, it started raining heavily. Soon, the power went off and the classrooms went into darkness. The students sat idle for almost 20 minutes without writing the examinations.
Finally, the college authorities put up candle lights in the classrooms. But the students were not compensated for the time they had lost during power cut.
The pictures and videos that showed the students writing examination using candle light have gone viral in social media.
The students and the teachers are totally disappointed over the recurring power cut being faced in the college even after setting up an High Tension (HT) Line to the college by spending Rs.54 lakh from the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) fund, which is exclusively meant for setting up infrastructure in the higher education field.
Such à huge amount was spent for the project with the claim that power supply to the college would not get hampered due to power cuts in future. But even now, power cuts continue to give students a harrowing time while writing examinations.
The students of the college are up in the arms against the recurring power cuts that serious affect their àcademic work.
Though students' associations are demanding a detailed probe into the setting up of the HT Line, the authorities are keeping mum over the matter.