IT has been several months since the Punjab University conducted the annual examinations for regular and affiliated college students of LLB-03 (annual) and LLB-05 (annual) programmes. The results should have been announced after four months as per policy and practice, but the university has failed to do so.

Last year, at the end of the academic session, the university administration had delayed the examinations for two months since it could not decide whether to conduct the examinations online or on-campus. The examinations were only conducted in September last year, and the final year students breathed a sigh of relief.

Unfortunately, the university is making students suffer again by not announcing the results. Putting the future of students at stake, the university administration does not seem to be bothered at all.

To get oneself enrolled as an advocate, it requires six months of training after the completion of the degree. These unfortunate students are still waiting for the university administration to declare their results so that they may start their training to join the legal fraternity while their counterparts from other universities have completed their training or are about to complete it.

They will be unable to appear in the upcoming Graduate Assessment Test (GAT) and late enrollment in the bar will make them junior to their own batch-mates of the same session. This will cause a drastic effect on their professional careers as an advocate or a judge.

For those students who want to pursue further studies, their academic year is more or less lost because the admission processes of most universities are closed and they cannot apply without their final year results in hand.

This is a huge failure of the administration which never gets tired of making tall claims about Punjab University being one of the oldest, largest, and top-ranked academic institutions of Pakistan.

Name withheld on request
Lahore

Published in Dawn, March 14th, 2021