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With basic difference in subject names like Accounts versus Accountancy and Political Science versus Civics, the students from other boards like ISC and State Board are at a disadvantage.

While getting admission in B.Com. (Honours) at Kirori Mal College (KMC), Siddharth, a student from Indian School Certificate (ISC) Board faced a gigantic issue. He received a call after submitting his documents that his Best of Four (BFS) will be cut by 2.5% because his mark sheet says ‘Accounts’ and not ‘Accountancy’ as prescribed by the University of Delhi (DU).

The student told Times of India (TOI) that on June 28th, he had gone to get admission in KMC. He shared “They took my form and documents, but I got a call on Sunday saying that a 2.5% will be deducted from my aggregate marks as DU does not accept Accounts, in which i have scored a 100”. He also claimed that many from ISC Board have taken admission in DU with accounts as a subject.

According to the report, this student from Kolkata had secured 97.5% in his class 12th ISC Board Examination. Sukanto Dutta, OSD Admissions at DU said “We will look into this on July 1st. We will match the course syllabus of ISC accounts to see if it matches with CBSE accountancy.”

Ravleen Malhotra, a student from St. Xavier’s, Chandigarh, also an ISC student who took admission in B.Com. (Honours) at Lady Shri Ram College last year shared that she did not face any such difficulty while taking admission.

To delve deeper into the issue we spoke to Ms Nidhi, who was the teacher-in-charge for Commerce Section. She told us that this did not happen in the B.Com. (Honors) course at Kirori Mal College and might have happened in some other course.

Nevertheless, she said that according to the University guidelines, if the name of a paper is different in a Board from that as prescribed the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), the students are to bring an ‘Equivalence certificate’ from their Board to show it at the time of admissions which stands as the proof that irrespective of their names, the papers were similar in nature and syllabus. In this case no marks are deducted and no student suffers any disadvantage. The percentage is only cut when the student does not have proof, and authorities cannot assume that these two subjects will have the same syllabi.

Although, Ravleen had also revealed that she did not present any ‘equivalence certificate’ at the time of her admission, and got admitted easily, without any hassle.

The Chief Executive and Secretary of Council of ISC Examination, Gerry Arathoon told TOI that “DU has always accepted Accounts for admission; I don’t know why this issue has cropped up now.”

Similarly, the Telangana State Board of Intermediate Education clarified that its students who study ‘Civics’ can take admission in the group containing ‘Political Science’ and that its second language is treated as elective. However, DU is still considering both languages as core subjects and not allowing aspirants to include it in the best-of-four calculation.

Interestingly, the matter of giving equal weightage to “civics” offered by Telangana board and “political science” offered by other boards had been resolved in 2017. But it has cropped up again in 2019. Around 10 students from Telangana Tribal Welfare Residential schools, which sponsor students from underprivileged backgrounds, had to change their choice of subjects as the university said that civics was not equivalent to political science, as reported by TOI.

The other problem is over the second language. As per the University’s rule, in the calculation of the BFS subjects, only one language can be included. Inclusion of two languages is allowed when one is an “elective” and the other “core”. Several boards have clarified to DU that the second language is being offered as an elective subject. Pawan, a student who passed from Telangana board told TOI, “There are already letters from the board but still the University is not listening to us. We are facing this problem with Sanskrit, which we studied as an elective subject.” There was a guideline sent to the colleges on Monday, which states that “language subjects which contain a significant amount of literature in its contents may qualify as elective”. Many colleges said the guideline was vague.

With inputs from Times of India

Feature Image Credits: Indian Express

Sakshi Arora

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