According to the controller of examinations, MDU, the move to give mercy chance to the students of 1995 and onwards had been a follow up of the decision taken by the Academic Council (AC) in its meeting held on December 19.

Therefore, students, who wish to take a mercy chance of improvement of result/clearing of re-appear paper(s), will have to submit their examination forms to the result branch of the university concerned up to January 20 without late fee. Thereafter, usual late fee will be charged.

Chairperson of the department Virender Chauhan said the department had earlier started its own news portal during the last academic session to provide practical knowledge to their students and now the e-paper was a step forward in this direction.

Addressing students in the seminar hall of Tagore Bhawan of the university, Bhardwaj said journalism was a fast changing field and in case the students of journalism were to prepare themselves for the challenges ahead, they have to be prepared in accordance with the modern day needs.

"Every big newspaper has its own news portal and e-paper today. The training received by students while working on these facilities will provide them the much needed confidence before joining the media industry," Bhardwaj added.

Former director of All-India Radio D.P. Malik, Suresh Verma from Jamia Milia Islamia, registrar R.K. Sehgal, director, public relations, Dilbagh Singh and chairperson of the public administration department of the university Rajbir Dalal were also present on the occasion.

The foundation stone of the museum was recently laid down by Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister, Arjun Singh.

Spokesperson of the varsity, Rakshanda Jalil, said, "We expect this museum to be functional by 2012. The museum will showcase the historical movement that mobilized millions of Indians to break away the shackles of centuries-old British Raj."

The museum will serve as a passage to the freedom struggle through audio-visual medium using latest technology for students and others.

Starting from the Battle of Plassey fought in 1757, which is considered a pivotal event that led to the rule of the British East India Company on the Indian subcontinent, to the First War of Independence in 1857 and the modern phase of the struggle which saw the rise of Mahatma Gandhi as a mass leader, will be the major attractions at the museum.

"Unlike other museums in the country, the new project will not depend only on the historical articles. Our effort will be to tell the story of our great Independence struggle through audio-visuals and archival materials," added Jalil.

The schools are awaiting the decision of a committee appointed by the Delhi government on fixing school fee.

The committee, reportedly, had ignored the matter with the fear of losing votes in the recently concluded assembly election.

Though private schools have been calling for fee hike since September this year, the Congress-led city government had postponed the matter to avoid popular backlash in the run to the assembly election.

Now that the Sheila Dikshit government is back to power, the school authorities expect the committee to start working on their demands.

Many schools have already issued notices to parents indicating the probable fee hike that would likely be implemented as soon as they are approved by the government. Meanwhile, some schools have even announced to increase their tuition fee by around 200 per cent.

The university will be holding 26 CETs for admissions to almost 50 academic programmes in four different categories: professional programmes, engineering programmes, MBBS programme and PG medical programmes.

The first entrance test will be for PG medical courses on May 19, 2009 and the last CET will be the Stage-II exam of MBBS on June 21, 2009. The CETs for most of the courses will be of two-and-a-half hour duration and will be held in two time slots i.e. 10.30 am to 1 pm and 2.00 pm to 4.30 pm, except for MBBS and PG medical courses which will be of three hour duration. The new programmes included by the University for CET-2009 are: M.Sc. (biodiversity and conservation), master of education, bachelor of prosthetics and orthotics, B.Tech. (tool engineering) and B.Tech.(environmental engineering).

GGSIPU is planning to conduct the CETs for four of its most sought-after courses MBA, MBBS, bachelor of technology (B.Tech.) and master of computer applications (MCA), in 10 cities across India, including Delhi, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Bhopal, Noida, Jalandhar and Nagpur, in comparison to eight cities last year. For rest of the courses, the entrance exams will be held only in Delhi.

More than 1.61 lakh students had appeared for the various CETs of the University in 2008, which was an increase of 23 per cent from the previous year.

The detailed CET schedule for 2009 can be accessed on the University website www.ipu.ac.in.

The admission procedure for these programmes will commence in February, 2009.

In the first of its kind exhibition organised by the Delhi University Library System, around 40 publishers from India and abroad have displayed their books on almost every subject at the Central Library lawns.

Scholars and teachers can go through each stall and hand over a list of books they would prefer to have in their college or department libraries. A scholar has to get his recommendation signed by his research supervisor and then send the list to the Head of Department (HoD) for final purchase.

University Librarian S. Majumdar says the initiative has been taken to help scholars get necessary books in the library and reduce the dependence on `guidebooks'. "We discourage the use of quick fixes during researches and the exhibition is one way of reducing the time taken to find books," Majumdar said. The three-day exhibition that started on Monday has another unique feature -- all books on display have been published after 2006. "This means that only the latest publications are available and so we can keep up with the times," said R K Bhatt, HoD, Library Information and Sciences department.

Shruti, a student of the department of Chemistry, said: "There are latest books that we were not even aware of and one does not have to travel too far either. I have recommended at least eight books for my department," she said.

Encouraged by the response, Majumdar now plans to make the exhibition an annual affair and introduce books for undergraduates.

Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, in keeping with its tradition, will give 24 points to Gujaratis while Jains can score 20 points at Mahavir Junior Model School. Sikhs and Punjabis can garner points at Guru Nanak Public School (GNPS) and Sindhis can benefit at Sadhu Vasawani School.

Major Advantage

• Don Bosco, Alaknanda, Communities, Christians, Points 51

• St. Francis de Sales, Jankpuri, Communities, Catholics, Points 50

• Loreto Convent, Delhi Cantt,  Communities, Christians, Points, 50

• Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, Lodhi Estate, Communities, Gujrati, Points, 24

• Mahavir Junior Model School, Nanak Piao, Communities, Jains, Points, 20

• Sadhu Vaswani, SHANTINIKETAN, Communities, Sindhis, Points, 20

• Guru Nanak Public School, Punjabi Bagh, Communities, Sikh, Punjabi, Points 5

Though the exact amount to be raised has not been disclosed by the school authorities, the parents speculate that it could be anywhere around 50 per cent or even more than that.

They have reported the matter to the education minister and requested him to develop some mechanism to determine the fee hike.

According to the parents, they have been formally informed by the schools on the proposed fee hike likely to be done in the near future.

"The proposed hike is apprehended to be in the vicinity of 50 per cent. It may cause a chill down to the spine of all the parents, wrecking their budget already upset by skyrocketing prices of items of daily use," said Manoj Jain, one of the worried parents from Rohini,

According to S K Nayak, director general of CIPET, the institute is set to design innovative courses in various disciplines of plastics engineering and technology like product design, plastics mould technology, plastics processing, testing and quality control. "The discipline specific CIPET's courses are industry oriented with lot of practical exposure in an industry environment, which help industries in getting right type of human resources, who can be directly entrusted responsibility of supervising and managing the technical operations in the respective areas of tool room, product design centres, plastics processing or manufacturing, testing and quality control, maintenance, R&D, and application development," said Nayak.

To increase its intake capacity, CIPET is also developing specific centres as technology schools in different areas of plastics engineering and technology including mould design and development, precision machining and CNC machining centre, plastics processing centres with capability to process high performance and speciality polymers.

Points to chew on

• Salwan Montessori School will not let parents with more than two children apply
  
• Sri Ram School is giving 20 points to interaction with parents
  
• No points on neighbourhood in some schools -- they say their transport system will take care of the distance factor
  
• Mahavir Senior Model School will give 5 points each to non-smokers, non-drinkers, and vegetarians

The school had devised this unique points system last year, Jain said.