Single-day break between semesters for DU students, Registrar cites Covid delay

The notification issued Wednesday shows there is a single-day break on January 4, 2023, and classes for the fourth semester would resume from January 5, 2023.

Students have pointed out there was no gap between the second and third semesters as well.

Chaitanya, a postgraduate student from Jammu, could not visit his family because he had to sit for his exam on August 25 and resume classes for the third semester the next day. “I am not a local in Delhi. I wanted to visit my family back home. But there was not a single day break,” said the M.Com student.

He said he was supposed to complete the formalities of fee payment and verification before the beginning of the new semester, but has not been able to do that yet.

DU Registrar Vikas Gupta said this was done with the “Covid batch” to ensure they don’t lose an academic year. “We have to cover the year which we lost due to Covid. We also have to complete the 180 days of teaching,” Gupta told The Indian Express.

According to the academic schedule, the theory exams will begin on December 20, 2022, and are likely to need by December 30, 2022.

“We plan to conduct all the exams by 28th or 30th December, so in a way, they would get 5 additional days of the break till their semester begins on the 5th (January),” added Gupta.

While the session for the 2020 batch has been brought back to normal, the academic session for the 2021 batch needs to be “compressed”, officials said.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, DU students got about five days along with the New Year’s Eve winter break between their third and fourth semesters.

Dr. Chandrachur Singh, a professor of Political Science at Hindu College, said since there are many subjects taught at DU, and students don’t have exams for all of them, they get a reasonable number of days between their last day of the exam and the beginning of the next semester.

Juhi Agarwal, 18, a second-year student at Ramjas College, said they got a single-day break between the first and second semester as well since their academic session started six months late. “My exams for the second semester ended on 12th August, so I got a break till the new semester started on 26th,” said the B.Com (Hons.) student.

“Technically, between my second and third semester also there were zero days of break, but because my exams got over by the 13th (of August), I got a break till the 26th so it is manageable,” said Devansh Banthia, 19, a second-year student at Shaheed Sukhdev College.

Prachi Verma, who is in her fourth year, said they got “at least a week of break” between semesters. The Bachelors of Elementary Education student also said their batch will be getting a two-week winter break, before the beginning of the new semester on January 2, 2023.