UGC releases academic calendar 2020-21 for first year students

UGC academic calendar 2020-21: University Grants Commission has released the academic calendar for the session 2020-21 for first-year university students of under-graduate and post-graduate courses. The UGC session calendar was shared by the Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal on Twitter. In view of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Commission has accepted the Report of the Committee and approved the UGC Guidelines on Academic Calendar for the First Year of Under-Graduate and Post-Graduate Students of the Universities for the Session 2020-21.

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UGC Guidelines for Academic Calendar 2020- 21

Admission Process (To be completed)	31.10.2020
Commencement of classes of above students Fresh batch ( First Semester/Year)	01.11.2020
Preparation Break	01.03.2021 to 07.03.2021
Conduct of Examination	08.03.2021 to 26.03.2021
Semester Break	27.03.2021 to 04.04.2021
Commencement of classes for Even Semester	05.04.2021
Preparation Break	01.06.2021 to 08.08.2021
Conduct of Examination	09.08.2021 to 21.08.2021
Semester Break	22.08.2021 to 29.08.2021
Commencement of Next Academic Session for this batch	30.08.2021

According to the latest UGC calendar, the academic session for freshers will now begin in November, and the delay will also impact the next academic session as well.

“In view of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Commission has accepted the Report of the Committee and approved the @ugc_india Guidelines on Academic Calendar for the First Year of Under-Graduate and Post-Graduate Students of the Universities for the Session 2020-21,” Education Minister Pokhriyal tweeted.

Minister Pokhriyal further added that a full refund for the admission cancellation will be made to students till November.

“To avoid financial hardship being faced by the parents due to lockdown and related factors, a full refund of fees will be made on account of all cancellation of admissions/ migration of students, up to 30.11.2020, for this very session as a special case,” he said.

On cancellation/ withdrawal of admissions up to December 31, 2020, the entire fee collected from a student will be refunded in full after deduction of not more than ₹1000 as processing fee.

The UGC had, in April, released an alternative academic calendar for colleges, with the plan to reopen colleges in September, but the delay in entrance exams and COVID infections surge has pushed the session by two months.

Supreme Court on Tuesday also asked the Central Board of Secondary Education(CBSE) to declare the results of compartment exams as soon as possible and coordinate with UGC to enable around 2 lakh students to apply in colleges in the current academic year.

Meanwhile, The number of novel coronavirus cases detected in India in the 24 hours ending 9 am Tuesday was 75,083. This took the country’s tally above 55 lakh. With an additional 1,053 deaths due to Covid-19, the toll rose to 88,935. The 55,62,664 cases in India include 9,75,861 people who are undergoing treatment and 44,97,868 who have recovered. The phase-III human clinical trial of the Covid-19 vaccine being developed by Oxford University, and manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII), began at the state-run Sassoon General Hospital in Pune on Monday. “We have started the phase-III trials of the vaccine (candidate Covishield). We will administer a dose to 150 to 200 volunteers,” news agency PTI quoted Dr. Muralidhar Tambe, Dean, Sassoon General Hospital, as saying.Globally, over 30.4 million have been infected by the virus, of which, nearly 21 million have recovered and 958,400 people have died. While fatalities in the United States approached 200,000, China has found coronavirus particles on the packaging of frozen squid tentacles from Russia. Britain is at a “critical point” in the pandemic, and data on cases are heading in the “wrong direction,” Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty warned Monday. The country may impose a second lockdown due to this.