A goof-up by the Mumbai university has led to mark sheets of nearly 1.6 lakh students being printed without the student’s photo in the slot allotted for the same. Over 2.4 lakh candidates had appeared for various undergraduate and postgraduate courses this year.
The varsity started incorporating students’ photographs on mark sheets since 2010 as a measure to ensure “transparency” and to curb the practice of fake marksheets.
However, this time around, the computerised data was so messed up that photographs of multiple students popped up corresponding to each candidate, university sources told dna. Due to this goof-up involving photographs, the university was forced to print mark sheets without students’ photographs.
A university official said the software triggered chaos by throwing up between eight and 10 photos against marks for each student. “We managed to fix only BCom [bachelor of commerce] records,” said the official.
So, with the university failing to fix the problem in time, mark sheets of all undergraduate courses – except those of about 80,000 commerce students – were sent to colleges recently without photographs. Principals of colleges confirmed that the slot for photos is vacant. Mark sheets of engineering and postgraduate courses, which are still being prepared, will also be printed without the photograph said the sources.
University officials blamed Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Limited, the agency to which online exam records have been outsourced. The agency has been managing the varsity’s online exam records since 2012.
Besides, the printing of mark sheets, which is done at a high-tech printing press, was instead done at the university’s press.
So, the two sets of marksheets are different. “The BCom marksheets carry a photograph and are printed in portrati (vertical) format while those for BA (arts) and BSc (scince) are without the photo and printed in landscape (horizontal) format,” said the principal of a city college.
Controller of examinations, Padma Deshmukh, confirmed that the goof-up in database had taken place. “Wrong photographs were spotted in many cases in MKCL’s (agency) data,” said Deshmukh.
Admitting that marksheets had been printed at the university’s press, she said, “We decided to print the mark sheets without photos as any further delay would have affected students.”
A senate member of the university, Sanjay Vairal, said this proves how public money is being wasted by the university authorities. “When they have their own set-up which can be used for exam-related work, why outsource this to an external entity? It only shows how influential people at the university and the state ministry [of higher education] are lending tacit support to this agency.”
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