Kannur: Kannur University, on Saturday, postponed 13 second-semester exams under its newly introduced four-year undergraduate programme after the Examination department failed to prepare the question papers on time

Students, who had gathered in their exam halls, were informed around half an hour later that the exams had been postponed to May 5 due to "some technical reasons."

The 13 papers postponed include Economics, Arabic, Malayalam, History, Urdu, Zoology, Electronics, and Hindi.

The Kerala Private College Teachers' Association (KPCTA) criticised the "repeated lapses by the university in conducting exams", linking the latest technical glitch to the question paper leak reported last week.

As per the examination protocol, the university emails the password-protected question papers to college principals two-and-a-half hours before the exam in institutions with over 500 students, and one hour before in those with fewer than 500.

"The questions were supposed to reach the colleges at least by nine for the 10 am exams. But at 10.11 am, the PA to the controller of the examination sent an email saying the exams have been postponed," said Dr Shino P Jose, state secretary of KPCTA.

The email said: "Due to some technical reasons, the examinations of the following courses of the II semester (FYUG) are postponed to May 5. Examinations will be conducted at the same centres at the same time."

When contacted, Registrar Prof Joby K Jose, who is also the controller of examinations (in charge), said 68 examinations were scheduled for Saturday, April 26. The questions were already loaded onto the computerised question banks. On Friday itself, question papers for around 44 courses were generated, he said. "But we could not generate the questions for a few courses because of technical issues. There were errors," he said.

After repeated attempts, all the question papers were generated by 11 am, he said. "But since the questions were supposed to reach the colleges by 9 am, we thought it was prudent to defer the exams," the registrar said and added that only a small number of students were affected, as most of the postponed papers were for interdisciplinary courses.