State-run universities will no longer issue physical copies of marks card, as all UG and PG marks cards will be available online from the coming academic year. The decision was taken at the Karnataka State Higher Education Council (KSHEC) meet on Monday.
B.H. Anil Kumar, Additional Chief Secretary, Higher Education, said Vice-Chancellors of State-run universities had been directed to ensure that all marks card of semester examinations conducted this December will be digitised.
He said the objective was to put an end to fake marks card and degree certificate rackets. Different departments, including the Department of Collegiate Education, had learnt that fake marks cards were submitted during recruitment as well as during the time of admissions.
Mr. Kumar also said that digitising the system would also put an end to the burden faced by university officials, who have to verify and attest marks cards and degree certificates from time to time.
Besides this, the universities have also been told to digitise their evaluation process and Visvesvaraya Technological University, which has been following online evaluation, has been asked to assist the universities and provide their software. Universities will have to pay a nominal fee of ₹5 lakh. This, department officials said, was being done to put an end to typographical errors during evaluation.
However, officials have still not decided what to do with the empty marks cards procured by the university.
The State government has also decided that in two months’ time, all respective boards starting from the Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board to higher education bodies will have to devise an online verification system. “They will have to start from recent academic years and go backwards to 1990. This will have to be linked to the National Academic Depository,” said Chief Secretary T.M. Vijay Bhaskar.
He also said that all State government departments during recruitments will have to verify with the respective boards to ensure marks submitted by candidates is original.
It has also been decided that universities in the State will have to print the marks card in Kannada and English.