The Department of Mathematics at DU has, however, it seems, settled the matter by clarifying that students of all streams can get admission to the course.

“The confusion was very trivial actually, with some colleges just getting confused because the name of the course suggests it is exclusively for science students. The Mathematics Department has informed us that the BA (Hons) Mathematics course has not been scrapped but has just been amalgamated into the BSc (Hons) Mathematics course,” G S Tuteja, Deputy Dean Students Welfare and senior Mathematics lecturer at Zakir Hussain College, said.

The issue came to light last week, when some colleges apparently decided not to admit students from the Arts and Commerce streams to the new course, claiming it is a ‘science’ course. Applicants too were perplexed by the course’s nomenclature; most Arts and Commerce students doubted as to whether they were eligible for the course or not.

The university, however, had been maintaining that students from all streams could apply. When colleges decided against admitting non-Science students, the Dean Students Welfare was forced to write to the Department of Mathematics for a clarification.

In his reply, Professor Tej Bahadur Singh, head of the Mathematics Department, stated students who had studied maths at the plus-2 level were eligible for the course and that colleges shall prepare separate merit lists for students of the Science, Commerce and Arts streams — as was the practice earlier.

The minimum eligibility criteria would be 45 per cent marks in the best-of-four aggregate, including one language and maths, and 50 per cent marks in maths.