Dear Jamia Millia, when will I get my results? A student’s open letter

Looking back at the time I was in school, I would be caught praying frantically for the ominous parent–teacher meeting to be delayed, just enough to let me slide through the vacations comfortably with my parents – blissfully unaware and terrified, often at the same time by the thought of the results. Things are a bit different now. While school would rigorously hand us over our assessment cards, as it happened it wasn’t to be so at my university. I was a student of Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), studying at the coveted faculty of Mass Media and Mass Communication, and never for once did I think that I will have to run from pillar to post to get a result that even my parents stopped asking for.

Having declared the results for the first two semesters with ease, the ones for the third and fourth semester have strangely gone MIA. We wrote our final semester exam in May without knowing our third semester exam results which was held in December. My colleagues tried at individual levels to enquire about the same, only to be met with a list that told us who passed and who failed. The grade sheet in question hadn’t arrived until we finished writing the exams for the final semester and were off in our own different ways. The final result still hasn’t arrived and neither has the provisional degree.

Many of us require the document to apply for jobs, higher studies and to get registered duly with our employer. Some of us require it to be issued scholarships, student visas and for other formalities. What sort of a university is so callous with the future prospects of its own students? I have called and written to, time and again, both my faculty and the Controller of Examinations with no clarity about the date of declaration of results even to this day. Finally, I had to make calls to check with my professors if they had corrected our sheets. To no one’s surprise, they had.

I am not the only person who is currently battling with this issue. Vaibhav Pratap Singh of Jamia’s Law Faculty confirms that he hasn’t been able to sit for interviews, as his prospective employers ask for a bar council registration. “I cannot get registered with the bar council unless I provide them with my provisional degree which is subject to declaration of the final result,” he says. I, on the other hand, cannot proceed with my visa formalities for higher studies abroad because the immigration office refuses to accept provisional documents as listed in their compendium of instructions. I’ll have to fast track my visa application process to be able to provide them with my original mark sheet. Is the university compensating us in any way for the losses incurred both in terms of time and money?

In my umpteenth call to the admin office, I was told that the result was to be declared in a day or two. Since those two days have passed, I have resolved to move forward and file an RTI with respect to the release of the final result for the outgoing batch of 2015- 2017 and the subsequent declaration of the date of issuance of our provisional degrees. Our result is our right and the university shall be doing us no favour by declaring them. I sincerely hope that they are able to sort the issue that is at the root of this problem and are able to release our results with immediate effect.