Mumbai, Oct 10 (HT): Around 600 Mumbai University students could lose a year, as the university is planning to bar them from the semester exams owing to a lack of attendance.

Colleges have lately made attendance norms stricter and are punishing students who do not fulfil the University’s requirement of having a minimum 75% attendance in lectures.

Narsee Monjee College barred 250 commerce stream students from taking the exams. Other colleges followed suit, taking the number to almost 600.

Usually, the number of students debarred from exams for inadequate attendance is low. “Usually the figure is negligible,” said a university official.

“If this is the case then the number is very high.”

While colleges refused to divulge information on the number of students they have debarred, officials at the university have said that Usha Pravin Gandhi College, Vile Parle, and Thakur College in Kandivli have sizeable number of defaulting students.

“There is still some revision going on in the list. There are some students with 50% attendance in BMM, BCom and BSc IT courses.

I cannot comment until we have reviewed all the attendance records,” said G Mohan, principal, Usha Pravin Gandhi College.

Naresh Chandra, pro vice chancellor of the university, said that the 600 odd students barred from taking the exams will be allowed to complete their year through the varsity’s Institute of Distance and Open Learning (IDOL). However, the admission for IDOL has been closed for almost a month.

“Some colleges reduced the attendance requirement to 50%. But students still chose to bunk classes. This is not acceptable. Though the university has given colleges a chance to review all the defaulters, they should be held accountable for missing lectures,” said a senate member.