Delhi University released the academic calendar for the third and fourth semesters of undergraduate and postgraduate courses for students in their second years and most of them have stated that they will get only a day’s gap in between. The notification which was issued on Wednesday states that there is a single-day break on January 4, 2023 and classes for the fourth semester would resume from January 5, 2023. Students said that there was no gap between the second and third semesters also. A postgraduate student from Jammu, Chaitanya, could not visit his family because he had to appear for his examination on August 25 and resume classes for the third semester in the next day. The M.Com student told, “I am not a local in Delhi. I wanted to visit my family back home. But there was not a single day break.” 

The M.Com student was supposed for completing the formalities of fee payment and verification before the beginning of the new semester and has not been able to complete that yet. 

DU Registrar Vikas Gupta said this was completed with the “Covid Batch” for ensuring that they won’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.” 

According to the academic schedule, theory examinations will start on December 20, 2022 and there are likely to be conducted on December 30, 2022. 

Gupta added, “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).” 

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

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

A professor of Political Science at Hindu College, Dr. Chandrachur Singh told, “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.” 

B.Com (Hons.) student Juhi Agarwal, 18, a second-year student at Ramjas College said, “My exams for the second semester ended on 12th August, so I got a break till the new semester started on 26th.” 

Devnash Banthia, 19-year-old second-year student at Shaheed Sukhdev College, “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.”