Indore: Lost password of UGC portal leaves DAVV students’ grievances unattended

Indore: In a strange incident, Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya (DAVV) has been looking for the password of an important ID assigned by University Grants Commission (UGC) to the university for accessing online complaints concerning it. Despite hard efforts for past one-and-a-half-month, the password could not be retrieved, even as pendency of complaints seeking redressal witnessing a sharp increase.

Complaints by students from DAVV and its affiliate colleges are regularly filed with grievance portal of DAVV but they have been left unaddressed as the university has “lost” the password for it. The latest such complaint was of a PhD aspirant which could not be accessed by the university in absence of the password. As many as 18 complaints by students of DAVV have been pending with the grievance portal for quite some time but the university allegedly cares little about them.

“That we do not care students’ grievances is not true. We do care but unfortunately we have misplaced the file in which the password of the grievance portal was written. For past one-and-a-half-month, since a news report of pendency of DAVV cases with UGC was published, we have been searching for that file but to no avail,” said dean of student welfare at DAVV, LK Tripathi.

He said that had UGC forwarded the complaints to the university through email, they would have addressed the complaints. When contacted, a senior official of the UGC told Free Press over phone from New Delhi that they email complaints received from students to the respective university on the very same day. On request by FP, the official further went through the UGC data and confirmed that complaints from DAVV and its affiliated colleges were forwarded to a nodal officer for student grievances appointed by the university. But Tripathi claimed that the university did not receive any email from the UGC regarding student grievances. “We have no clue if any complaint by student is pending with the UGC because the same has not been forwarded to us for necessary action,” claimed Tripathi.
As per registrar office, DSW is the nodal officer for accepting complaints on behalf of student grievance committee. But strangely, the DSW denied receiving any compliant pertaining to students’ grievance from UGC. Tripathi said that the UGC must be having email address of his predecessors and thus, they might be sending complaints to them.

Four days ago, a student had lodged a complaint with UGC alleging that he had appeared in interview for admission in PhD course and followed all necessary instructions but still his name did not figure in the admitted students. He further alleged irregularities in admission process. The complaint so far remained unaddressed as DAVV could not access it sans password of grievance portal.

Earlier about 50 days ago, a student of Institute of Engineering and Technology had registered a complaint with the UGC portal, alleging former students of the institute illegally enter hostels and consume liquor. As the university could not access it online aw well, the same remained unaddressed till date.