Bizarre new Mumbai University exam rule leaves undergraduate law students in a fix

Mumbai University's law students can no longer use blue ink to write their papers. Now undergraduate law students of the BLS LLB course can only write their exams in black ball pen. No blue ball pens, no fountain pens and certainly no pens of any another colour whatsoever.

What's worse, this rule was discovered in fine print only on the day of the exam, with no prior intimation. And the reason? Using a blue ball pen can 'reveal your identity' and hence be considered 'cheating'. At least according to the University of Mumbai.

Generally there are rules and regulations given on the back side of the first leaf of the answer booklet. The new ball pen rule had been inserted in here, albeit with no prior warning. According to law student Shonottra Kumar, who took her exam from the Pravin Gandhi College of Law, this is highly unfair since three hours is not sufficient time to finish the paper itself, so few people read the instructions beforehand. 

"After I started writing my paper with a blue pen, an announcement was made that we could not write with blue pens and the students were expected to write with black pens only", says Kumar. So not only did the University not care to publicise the new rule beforehand, the invigilators too did not bother to announce it before the exam began, leaving a lot of students uncertain about their papers.

Fortunately, the invigilators at Kumar's centre had their papers signed and verified by the invigilators even though most candidates wrote in blue ink.

Students at other centres were not so lucky, alleges Kumar.

"Most other centres were not informed. They wrote their papers in blue ink. They had no verification or any such other thing," she states.

Given this turn of events, a lot of students are now worried whether their answer sheets would be considered legitimate by the University of Mumbai.

Kumar also finds the new rule 'stupid'. "If they really want to make new rules they should do something about the paper correcting methods", she says angrily.

Students from other law colleges also expressed their anguish with the new rule.

"My centre was PES Law College, Dadar. I was not informed about the new rules, in particular about the rule making writing the examination with black ink mandatory. As a consequence, I have written my examination in blue ink. The university instead of imposing restrictions on the ink used, should focus on other meaningful measures to curb cheating and other practices prevalent in examination halls," says Shrey Fatterpekar, a fifth year student of the BLS course at Rizvi Law College.

"My centre this time was Rizvi Law college, and not a single professor or invigilator informed us of this new rule of using only black ball pens for writing in our answer sheets. It's well known that we are supposed to use black ball pens for filling in our bar code but till last year we were allowed to use blue or black colored pens, not being informed otherwise most of us continued to use blue pens. I don't see how writing in blue pens colored pens would reveal a student's identity, those who actually would want to reveal their identity to the examination moderator would probably resort to other methods as well," concurs Ishita Shah, a fourth year student at Pravin Gandhi College.

Umaang Trivedi of the same college has an even worse tale. He too raises the issue of a lack of prior notification. "My centre was Nalanda College and they seem to be very disorganised. The question papers were given 45 mins late. And there is no way to solve any doubts in the question paper. Further there was no such announcement about use of black ink pen only. Aribitarily announcing such a rule is wrong as well as there was no proper annoucement made which will notify the students. The ink doesnot matter but there should be a proper notification about it to students and well before hand rather a day before the exam," says Trivedi.

Officials from the Law Department of Mumbai University could not be reached for comment.

It is likely that the new rule may not be implemented by Mumbai University in this instance. But the lack of communication as well as the absence of strong logic has left many students bitter and anxious. Surely Mumbai University has to answer for this latest goof-up.