Life, jobs, promotions at stake, pvt and govt staffers write engg exam

Nagpur: Some 170 engineering professionals and government officials, having between 10 and 25 years of work experience, on Sunday appeared for an exam worth 420 marks, which number is ironically the section for cheating in the Indian Penal Code (IPC). They were writing the exam to save their degrees, over 10 years after being awarded the same by a ‘deemed to be university’.
All the examinees belong to the Udaipur-based Janardhan Rai Nagar Rajasthan Vidyapeeth (deemed to be university), including people at the threshold of career promotions as well as those at the fag end of their careers. All of them had enrolled for the now-scrapped distant mode engineering degrees courses between 2001 and 2009.

The ‘degree validity test’ was conducted by the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) for deemed to be university students, who were dealt a blow by the Supreme Court ruling suspending their degrees earlier this year. The city’s Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology (VNIT) is the only centre in Maharashtra for the test being conducted at 16 centres across the country.

In accordance with the apex court order, the students were asked to make a choice between appearing for a test jointly conducted by AICTE and UGC by January 15, or seek fee refund. In case the students fail to clear the exam, comprising two theory papers worth 160 marks each and 100-mark practical, their degrees would remain suspended.

The controversy over the case had forced AICTE to keep the exam under wraps, an official said. VNIT officials too were tight-lipped about the exam and they even feigned ignorance about the deemed university exam when asked about it.

On Sunday, when this TOI correspondent visited the exam centre, the security guards deployed by VNIT tried to prevent him from speaking to the exam authorities. A couple of guards also accosted this correspondent and demanded his ‘permission’ to cover the exam. The guards backed off only after exam officials intervened.

After the exam, TOI spoke to several examinees who appeared dejected and blamed AICTE for playing with their careers and putting their life at risk. Those working with private companies and some from public sectors too said their jobs were at stake. Some had even come over from Gulf nations, United Kingdom, and the United States of America, where they were working on the basis of the Bachelor of Engineering (BE) and Bachelor of Architecture (BArch) degrees awarded by the Udaipur-based institute without AICTE approval.

An Aligarh-based professional said a couple of his colleagues beside him had got jobs mainly on the basis of this UG degree. “Another friend has a huge home loan. Who will be responsible if he loses his job? We have other financial liabilities beside running our families. When we had taken admission the course was recognized by UGC. Was the AICTE sleeping all these years?” he said.

A Mumbai-based 58-year-old manager at a MNC said he was served a notice by his employer for playing fraud, while it was actually the students who had been cheated by AICTE, UGC and the institute.

CASE HISTORY

BE/BTech courses through distant mode were started for working professionals, who couldn’t attend regular classes and needed higher qualification for career advancement. Later, several people secured good jobs at MNCs and public sector companies on the basis on the part-time undergraduate courses. In 2017, Supreme Court suspended such degrees while hearing a case of Orissa Lift Irrigation Corporation Limited versus Rabi Shankar Patro. The ruling was applied to all such deemed to be universities running technical courses without AICTE approval. Students had joined the course as it gave them a chance to work simultaneously. The fee too was low as compared to other similar courses.