Students in their final year at the Faculty of Law, Delhi University, have now reached the eighth day of their indefinite hunger strike. Their protest is against a policy that restricts them from clearing previous exam backlogs during the supplementary exam period. Prior to the 2017 rule change, final-year students were able to clear outstanding papers from their first and second years during the supplementary exams scheduled for third-year subjects. This policy shift has limited the supplementary exams to only third-year subjects.
As a result, students with backlogs from earlier years are forced to wait an additional 6 to 12 months to take the regular term-end examination. This scenario means that even if a student has successfully completed 29 out of the required 30 subject papers for their degree, they are still required to wait for the next examination cycle to attempt the remaining paper. This delay impacts their ability to enroll with State Bar Councils and to sit for the All India Bar Examination (AIBE).
In a conversation with Bar & Bench, a final-year student expressed, “Most law universities allow supplementary exams for all semesters. Holding back degrees for a single paper results in an arbitrary year-long career gap, which hinders our AIBE attempts and further studies.”
The protesting students are requesting a one-time special examination that would enable them to clear backlogs from the first four terms concurrently with the ongoing supplementary exams for the fifth and sixth terms. Additionally, they are calling for a comprehensive review of the 2017 amendment to view the three-year LL.B. program as an integrated course rather than evaluating each term separately.
Suraj Gaikwad, a student participating in the hunger strike, stated, “We are on Day 8 of our indefinite hunger strike at Umang Bhawan because the administration has not responded to our legitimate demands. Previously, DU offered supplementary exams for backlogs from the first to fourth semesters, but discontinuing this option forces graduating students into an unwarranted one-year career gap. We are losing valuable time for Bar Council enrollment, AIBE, and further education. We will continue our strike until an official announcement is made for a special supplementary exam.”
Efforts to reach the university administration for comment were unsuccessful. Attempts by Bar & Bench to contact the offices of the Dean and the Controller of Examinations via phone on August 6 were unsuccessful as calls did not connect.
