Students' groups hold protests against high Delhi University cut-offs

Students' groups on Monday staged protests here against the Delhi University (DU) administration over the high cut-offs announced for undergraduate admission.

The protests were held by the Krantikari Yuva Sangathan (KYS) and the Left-affiliated Students' Federation of India (SFI). They alleged that high cut-offs favour students of big private schools and demanded more transparency in the admission process.

DU announced its first cut-off list for undergraduate admission on Saturday with Lady Shri Ram (LSR) College for Women pegging the score at 100 per cent for three Honours courses.

The 100 per cent cut-off for undergraduate admissions in DU comes after a gap of five years.

Activists of the KYS burnt an effigy of the cut-off list to highlight its "discriminatory nature" and demanded that it be done away with immediately, the students' group said in a statement.

"This cut-off that is decided on the basis of marks scored by students of big private schools is nothing but a policy of ensuring that the most marginalised student does not have any access to quality higher education. This ensures that students who bear the brunt of substandard public-funded school education are turned away from public-funded universities," they said.

KYS activists were detained by police during the protest.

Twenty activists of the KYS were protesting at the Arts Faculty, North Campus, a senior police officer said.

"Eight of them were detained when they refused to disperse. They were taken to Maurice Nagar police station," the officer said.

Meanwhile, the SFI submitted a memorandum to the university vice chancellor "regarding the unfair and unjustifiably high cut-offs for undergraduate admissions," it said in a statement.

The memorandum was submitted by SFI Delhi president Sumit Kataria, it said.

"We strongly demand a transparent admission process and we stand firmly against such exclusionary methods that only favour the high society," it added.

While the 100 per cent cut-offs have been a matter of debate, the required marks were expected to be higher this year as over 1.84 lakh students scored above 90 per cent and more than 41,000 students scored above 95 per cent marks in CBSE Class 12 exams.

LSR College has pegged 100 per cent score for three courses for general category aspirants -- BA (Hons) Economics, BA (Hons) Political Science and BA (Hons) Psychology.

The college has the highest cut-off among Science courses as well. It has announced a cut-off of 99.75 per cent for admission to B.Sc (Hons) Statistics for general category students, while Hindu College has pegged the score for the same course at 99.25 per cent.

Hindu College has announced a cut-off of 99.33 per cent for B.Sc (Hons) Physics.

Among the BA programme combinations, aspirants need to have a minimum of 99.25 per cent for gaining admission for a combination of Economics and Political Science in LSR College, the highest among all the combinations.