Friday, August 25, 2017

Mumbai University seeks third extension, this time till August 31

The Hindu: Mumbai: Friday, August 25, 2017.
Activists vow to use RTI to to expose “wrongdoings”
Former state unit chief of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and activist, Anjali Damania, while blaming the State Education Minister Vinod Tawde and Mumbai University (MU) vice-chancellor, Sanjay Deshmukh for the delay in declaration of results announced that she would use the Right to Information (RTI) Act to expose the wrongdoings in the varsity.
At a press conference here on Thursday she said, “There is absolute chaos in the MU. This is the third time they have sought extension (August 31, 2017) for announcement of results. The answer-sheet assessment work was done through digital evaluation for what was a manually written examination. The digital plans were designed to fail,” she said.
Right to Information activist Anil Galgali, who was also present at the press conference, announced a joint-initiative to ferret out documents related to the tendering process to assess whether norms were violated before appointment of the agency for digital assessment of the answer papers.
Ms. Damania demanded exemplary punishment for the political and academic stakeholders in Maharashtra and said that from marking the Students’ Code, Question Paper code, the entire process was a sham. The first section of answer-sheets were sent to one place, another section went to a different destination. “As a result, even the results that will be announced will be suspect,” she said.
“The lives and careers of several lakh final year students is on the verge of devastation. The responsibility of introducing the system, without any discussion or pilot project rests with Mr. Tawde and Mr. Deshmukh,” she said. Both have decided to use the RTI Act to unearth details of the tendering process for the digital assessment of answer sheets.
Mr. Galgali said the delay had led some students to file petitions before the High Court, which came up for hearing on Thursday.
“The MU through its counsel, Rui Rodrigues, sought time till August 31. Senior advocate Satish Talekar represented Abhishek Bhat and Sachin Pawar, law students who have moved the High Court,” Mr. Galgali said.
Mr. Pawar, in his petition, has claimed that the online assessment was an abject failure while Mr. Bhat has stated that the MU has admitted to its failure by seeking another extension.