Delhi’s University’s vice-chancellor Dinesh Singh, who along with former Human Resources Development minister Kapil Sibal spearheaded DU’s controversial Four Year Undergraduate Programme, resigned earlier today.

Rescinding the FYUP was one of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s manifesto promises. The party's youth wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, made it a key aspect of their platform in the DU elections in 2013, and defeated the youth wing of the Congress comprehensively.

Yet the FYUP had already proved the most unlikely of political footballs. (You can read a comprehensive report on the programme here.) It managed to unite Left and Right, who have both opposed it. It drove a wedge between the faculty and students of India's best-known university and the authorities that oversee it. And it had Narendra Modi-acolyte Madhu Kishwar calling one of the prime minister’s favoured ministers, Smriti Irani, a leftist agent.

DU began to implement a comprehensive overhaul of the traditional cumulative three-year degree programme last year, shifting to an American-style semester-based four-year system. Sixty thousand students enrolled under the new plan, despite a great deal of opposition at the time. Now, however, the FYUP appears to be coming apart at the seams.

The University Grants Commission, which provides the University with funding, ordered DU to end the four-year programme and revert to the three-year curriculum. The DU administration has so far refused to comply.

On Monday, DU’s colleges decided to defer publishing the cut-off lists, delaying the admissions process, which was supposed to begin on Tuesday, until the standoff is resolved. For now, students, parents and college principals alike are confused about what the next year at DU will look like.

Where did it come from?

On December 24, 2012, the Academic Council of the Delhi University – the key decision-making body for the more than 77 colleges that come under DU – held a special meeting where the council officially adopted the proposed Four Year Undergraduate Programme, with six dissenting votes.

The idea had been broached earlier that year by the vice-chancellor at the time, Dinesh Singh. Singh, fresh off a victory over the teachers’ unions about bringing in the semester system, announced his interest in switching over to a four-year programme. Human Resources Development minister Kapil Sibal and former National Innovation Council chairman Sam Pitroda were firm proponents of the overhaul, believing it would do a better job of preparing students to enter the workforce.

Who thought it necessary, and why?

With mounting criticism about Indian graduates being unready to enter industry and needing further training after college, Sibal and Pitroda pushed for alterations to India’s university system. They argued that the new system would make it easier for students to begin working, if they so chose, or for them to go directly to Western universities for postgraduate studies. Under Sibal, the HRD ministry saw the Delhi FYUP programme as a pilot project, which could then be replicated across the country.

Who opposed it?

Opposition to FYUP came from across the spectrum. Teachers’ unions, such as Delhi University Teachers’ Association, saw it as a further battle in a war they had waged with the vice-chancellor since the semester-system transition. The teachers claimed that the new system took away some of their independence, and watered down existing curricula.

A number of student organisations have opposed the programme on a number of different platforms. Some have disagreed with the implementation, claiming it was rushed, while others insist that it adds unnecessary foundation courses and the cost of an extra year for no appreciable benefit.

DUTA and the Left’s opposition to FYUP was not successful, since the programme was eventually implemented by the university. But the ABVP decided to join their cause, making the rollback of FYUP one of their key planks in the Delhi University Students Union elections last year.

ABVP ended up comprehensively beating the Congress youth wing, National Students Union of India, on the back of this campaign. Clearly this was enough to convince the BJP – the second-most powerful person in the current government is former ABVP stalwart Arun Jaitley – to make it part of its election manifesto.

The Aam Aadmi Party did the same. In fact, after the DUSU elections, even the NSUI, the youth wing of the Congress, the party that implemented the FYUP, ended up opposing the programme.

Where do things stand now?

The FYUP has been in place for a year now, with about 60,000 students under it. Over the weekend, the UGC decided that the FYUP was in contravention of the National Education Policy’s 10+2+3 system. DU refused to kill the FYUP, instead tweaking it to ensure that those who leave after three years get an officially recognised bachelor’s degree.

The next day, the UGC once again reiterated its stance, insisting that the university must end the FYUP, and wrote to individual colleges telling them not to admit students under anything but a three-year programme. The HRD ministry – which oversees education in India – insisted that it wouldn’t intervene, saying the university should remain independent, but the minister still mentioned that the UGC’s opinion was supreme. It also asked them to “migrate” the current FYUP students back into the three-year system, although it is unclear how that will happen.

The biggest worry is for the first batch of FYUP students, who might now have to switch back into a completely different system, potentially having wasted their first year on now-defunct foundation courses.

Questions have also arisen about the independence of DU after the UGC order, with some academics arguing that the Commission is overstepping its own mandate. Various organisations across Delhi have been protesting both for and against the scheme, sometimes violently.