After struggling to avail online classes owing to ban on high-speed internet in Kashmir, students studying in colleges and Universities outside Kashmir are now finding it difficult to take part in the online exams.
Many students said they could not write the internal exams conducted by their Colleges due to low-speed internet in Kashmir.
Mohsin Mehraj, a student from Nishat who is pursuing B-tech in Bangalore said he missed his internal exams last month when the authorities snapped internet in Srinagar following the gunfight in Nawakadal area of Srinagar.
“I am one of the only two Kashmiri students in the class. We couldn’t write the exams due to the ban on the internet,” Mohsin said.
He said their next exam will start in the first week of July.”The slow internet speed is making it worse for us. We are already unable to use all the online tools because of the erratic internet service,” he said.
The young student said for the past over two months they were lagging behind other students of the class from different states, in studies.
Noureen Javaid, an undergraduate student from St. Stephens Colleges, New Delhi said she had to move to her relatives several times to access internet.
She said her College has announced the date for the online final semester exams, but she was in a fix due to the low speed internet in Srinagar.
“As per our online exam pattern, we are provided three hours per paper, two hours for solving question and one hour for downloading and uploading of question papers and answers. Given the low speed internet, I would not be able to write the exams when even a few MB file takes hours to download. During internals, we were somehow able to make our teachers understand about the internet problem we face in Kashmir. Our end semester exams are conducted by Delhi University and they can’t change the whole scheme of exams for one student,” said Javaid.
She said accessing study material for exam perpetration and connecting with teachers has been very difficult for her due to slow-speed internet.
“Even if we give our 100 percent we can’t compete with our classmates due to ban on the high speed internet here,” she said.
Some other students said they were not able to use applications like Zoom classes due to low speed internet and they have to adjust with low speed-driven tools like Google class rooms.
Students in Kashmir have been repeatedly seeking restoration of high speed internet which was snapped in August last year following abrogation of Article 370. The students have been relying on messaging apps and low end platforms for online classes.