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Hyderabad: Students staged a protest at Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU) at Kukatpallyon Thursday, July 9, demanding extra grace marks to help them pass their exams.

Grace marks are governed by a set of academic regulations revised periodically by the University Grants Commission (UGC). R22 regulations, the trigger for the protests, apply to studentsadmitted in 2022. With new revisions in 2025, batches of 2022, 2023 and 2024 were left in a lurch with much fewer grace marks, students have alleged.

Speaking to Siasat.com, a student leader and member of the Student Protection Forum, Mohammad Nehaal-ur-Rehman, claimed that the R22 regulation originally did not allow any grace marks for students.

According to him, previous batches (up until R16) had an exemption to skip one exam. This was done away with in the R18 regulation, as students who had written all their exams were getting a lower percentage than students who had skipped one of their exams.

Students passing out under the R18 regulation were still given grace marks as per their demand after staging protests in 2023.

The R25 regulation allows both an exemption of four credits and grace marks. Neither provision is available in the R22 regulation, Nehaal said.

He said that students had staged a protest last month and submitted a representation demanding grace marks, after which they were granted 0.15 per cent grace marks. This, he claims, is “for name’s sake” and does not help students clear even one subject.

With their demands still not met, dozens of students gathered for a protest at the campus on Thursday, now demanding an allocation of 0.50 per cent grace marks and subject exemption. The students have been assured by the college management that a committee will be formed to review their demands, Nehaal said.

Meanwhile, the JNTU management has denied these claims, saying that 0.50 grace marks were only introduced for students admitted between 2018 and 2021 since their studies were disrupted by the pandemic. The 0.15 grace marks have been applied to all batches before and after the pandemic batch, the Public Relations Officer and Assistant Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Shravan G, told Siasat.com.

“Students from five different colleges under the JNTU had staged a protest today, probably because they have received placement offers and are short of a few marks. We have constituted a committee to look into their demands and will take a decision accordingly.” Shravan said. He added that a circular had been issued earlier only to clarify that the grace marks had been reverted to 0.15 per cent and were not to introduce any new allocation.

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