Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, November 11

Admitting students with bare pass marks in various professional courses, including engineering, pharmacy and management, has enabled technical universities to rake in moolah.

IKGPTU spokesperson said the entire information shared by the complainant has been verified at various levels and nothing wrong has been detected. “The university is working in the most transparent manner and has been sharing all the details through the RTI. A large number of students shown in the data also include those enrolled in the distance education,” he said.

Mass re-appears and re-evaluations has fetched close to Rs 694.19 crore for IK Gujral Punjab Technical University till December 2019 (updated figure of fee collected for 2020, 2021 not available yet) and Rs 22.03 crore for 7-year-old Maharaja Ranjit Singh Punjab Technical University.

It has been noted that as many as 71 per cent students of the IKPTU opt for re-appears while up to 60 per cent students from the MRSPTU opted for re-appear exam. Further, the IKGPTU even collected Rs 29.89 crore by selling marks to the students (Rs 5,000 for four grace marks as per a special scheme).

In 2017, the state government had asked the Vigilance Bureau to probe the matter, but nothing has come up so far. Amount varying between Rs 26.5 crore (as in 2019) and Rs 69.2 crore (in 2014) was being collected annually as re-appear and re-evaluation fee at the IKGPTU.

The fall in amount has happened due to decrease in number of students with the IKGPTU owing setting up of the MRSPTU. As many as 77,149 students had applied for re-appear in May 2016, but the number came down to 30,492 in May 2021.

All the details have come out through multiple RTI applications filed by Navdeep Kamboj, who has been raking up the issue since 2012. Alleging foul play, he has even written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi asking him to “uncover the scam”.

Kamboj said even incumbent Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi had remained the Minister of Technical Education, but nothing happened during his tenure. “I had even sought reply on the probe through the RTI, but to no avail,” he said.

A close perusal of the data shows that percentage of students seeking re-appear has been steadily increasing over the years at the IKGPTU. Around 50 per cent students had gone for re-appear in December 2012, the figure touched 71.27 per cent in May 2019. As many as 24.04 per cent students (35,735) students applied for re-evaluation in May 2012, but 15.69 per cent (5609) of them passed in that semester.

The data further shows that majority of the students going for re-appear and re-evaluation were the first and second year BTech students.

In December 2011, a total of 29,220 students had applied for re-evaluation at the IKGPTU, of whom 7,743 students were from BTech (1st year) and 9009 from BTech (2nd year). Others included 205 MCA, 633 BBA, 1,600 BCA and 1,407 MBA students.