Pune: Second and third year students of engineering institutes under Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) will hold a protest on the varsity’s premises on Wednesday against a change in the pattern of examination marks that was allegedly not communicated till 45 days before the tests.Many students claimed they had failed various backlog exams as a result. SPPU refuted the claims and said all ordinances were uploaded on their website and students did not see it.Meanwhile, students further said that under the 2024 pattern, the written exam was for 70 marks and 28 the passing marks. In 2025, SPPU the written exam was for 60 marks and 24 the passing marks. However, in the backlog tests the 60-mark paper was for 70 marks, with passing marks fixed at 28. They also complained that grace marks were awarded arbitrarily. Students said the issues have caused them to lose a year and have demanded a special re-examination.SPPU director of the board of examinations and evaluation Rajendra Talware said, “The university always has the interest of students in mind and would not deliberately try to fail them. All the affected students had backlogs. In this context, it means they failed in the written exam in their previous academic year (AY). The weightage then was 70-30. This means 70 for written and 30 for internal. Internal marks were already given to the student in their previous AY. Now, when they write the exam, they appear for the new pattern which is 60-40. We need to keep the internal marks as it is and scale up the written exam marks to out of 70.”He further said student had to secure minimum 40% marks to pass the subject. “If they get 24 out of 60, they have passed. It converts to 28 out of 70, which is also pass. The 40% rule remains the same and there is parity in the evaluation even when 60 is scaled up to 70,” said Talware.He further said there cannot be arbitrary grace marks as these are not allotted manually. “There are ordinances specifying who gets how much grace marks and it is done automatically by the system. For example, if a student has participated in NCC/NSS, he/she will get an additional 10 marks. Then there are grace marks based on best of performance, etc. These calculations are done by the system and are completely transparent,” said Talware.
