MU misplaces answer sheets of 3,000 students, scrambles to trace them

Mumbai: The University of Mumbai (MU) has allegedly misplaced more than 3,800 answer papers of final year examinees while conducting their online assessment.

The students whose mark sheets were shown to contain acronyms ‘A’ (absent) or ‘RR’ (result reserved) on the university’s website are the ones whose papers got misplaced, said sources.

In order to retrieve the papers, the varsity has begun a search on the basis of the ‘venue code’ assigned to them, which refer to an examinee’s college. The papers were misplaced due to “physical” and “technical” errors. The papers that were misplaced have been classified into two categories — logical and physical.

In logical, answer sheets have been misplaced within the new On-Screen Marking (OSM) system, which is where the assessment is done. In the physical misplacement, the answer sheets are yet to be scanned and evaluated by the assessors.

“We will create venue codes for the answer sheets which are lost so that we can find them. Later, through barcode and Question Paper (QP) code will find the missing answer papers and declare the results,” said MU’s acting controller of examinations Arjun Ghatule.

Since last week, MU has managed to declare the results of major courses. The state government had asked the varsity to declare results of papers for which even 80 to 90 per cent evaluation had been completed. Hence, some results were declared in phases. However, it has come to light that the remaining 10 to 20 per cent have been lost or misplaced by the varsity.

Around 29,000 students have got RR in their mark sheet, which means their results have been ‘withheld’ or put on hold. Now, these students’ results are considered as ‘Incremental Gadget’, which means they will be put on priority basis for assessment. A source said that once this priority basis assessment is cleared, the remaining answer sheets would be valued, i.e., around 58,000.