NU students get hall tickets with someone else’s picture

Nagpur: Days after Nagpur University (NU) administration promised Senate members it will punish private agency Promarc for errors in hall tickets, more errors have surfaced. With exams starting on Monday, several undergraduate students have received hall tickets with someone else’s photograph.
At the start of second phase of winter exam on November 14, several students had received hall tickets without photos. Now, students have been handed over the hall tickets with wrong photos, with only two working days to get the mistakes corrected.

Students told TOI that earlier photographs of their classmates or students from other streams used to get mixed up. “This time, photographs of unknown persons have been printed. This girl is not from our college. The university has been blaming us for uploading our friend’s pictures. How will it defend this goof-up?” they asked.

NU has outsourced most of its examination work to private agency Promarc in line with reforms introduced over the last couple of years. However, problems in generation of hall tickets and processing of mark sheets have been persisting since the agency took over, but NU has never penalized Promarc.

In winter 2017 and summer 2018, TOI had reported several mistakes in hall tickets and online mark sheets of students. In the absence of statutory bodies over last two years, students representatives couldn’t compel NU administration to take action against Promarc.

On October 25, during the first full-fledged Senate meeting, graduates constituency member Manmohan Bajpai had confronted the administration over lapses in services by Promarc. Bajpai had informed the Senate that students were receiving hall tickets with wrong photographs, gender mismatch etc. Backed by other members, Bajpai had forced the administration to assure action on Promarc.

Pro-VC Pramod Yeole told TOI that a penalty clause has been included in the memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Promarc but was never imposed. “We need to rectify the mistake. So far, no college has confirmed any error in hall tickets,” he said.

Interestingly, so far NU exam officials had been blaming students and colleges for faults in exam data.

Bajpai said the NU must initiate an inquiry and take action against Promarc in a time-bound manner. “There has to be a limit for tolerating mistakes. Even NU officials should be punished if they are at fault,” he said.