KARACHI, Jan 30: Withdrawing its earlier decision to award 'average' marks to all BCom and BA (male) regular candidates whose Jan 13 papers at Karachi University were disrupted, the university has asked all such candidates to reappear in their paper rescheduled for Feb 12.

A spokesperson for the KU told Dawn on Monday: “The decision to award 'average' marks to candidates whose Jan 13 papers were disrupted and who might prefer not to reappear in their same paper which was earlier rescheduled for Feb 1 has been withdrawn because of a prevailing confusion over 'average' marks and due to a large number candidates who will be appearing in their disrupted papers.”

The KU official said that “now the question of awarding average marks does not arise”.

The paper would now be held on Feb 12 between 2pm and 5pm at their original centres on the campus and all those candidates who thought that they had not solved their Jan 13 papers properly would have to reappear in the papers as the earlier decision to award 'average' marks to those who might not wish to reappear in their rescheduled paper had been withdrawn, he said.

The paper was earlier scheduled to be held on Jan 9, but it was postponed at the eleventh hour due to a public holiday declared by the Sindh government on account of the annual Urs of Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai.

The paper which was the last paper for the candidates taking their BCom (part-I) annual examinations as regular candidates was then fixed for Jan 13 in the morning shift, but it was disrupted when some students protesting against the university admissions policy had resorted to hooliganism and forced the candidates to flee from their examination centres.

Shortly after the incident, the KU through a press release had announced that the disrupted papers would now be held on Feb 1 for the students of the centres affected by the hooliganism and those who would not like to take their paper on Feb 1 would be given 'average' marks.

The KU decision created an impression among the candidates that 'average' marks meant that they would be awarded passing marks in their disrupted papers, even if they preferred to skip their papers which were earlier rescheduled for Feb 1.

It may be pointed out that the same papers of female candidates of BCom and BA examinations whose centres had been set up at various female colleges of the city were conducted smoothly on Jan 13.