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.
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