Vinod Tawde wants CP advice to make exams foolproof

Concerned about the reputation of Mumbai University, education minister Vinod Tawde has requested Mumbai police commissioner Datta Padsalgikar to suggest measures to prevent any malpractices in exams in future. The minister’s request has come after the Mumbai police cracked a case of the alleged tampering of engineering course answer sheets to increase the scores of students. The police has arrested eight persons in the case so far, including the guard of the store room where the answer sheets were kept, who is said to be the kingpin of the racket.

The minister has told the police chief to give suggestions to make the examination system foolproof like installing CCTV cameras, deploying security agency personnel, etc at the examination centre of the university where the answer sheets are kept before correction.

“I have spoken to the police commissioner to look into the matter of answer sheet leakage. There are loopholes in the system and we want to eradicate it completely,” Mr Tawde told The Asian Age on Wednesday. The minister said that the government is planning to install CCTV cameras at the examination centre to monitor activities there. The government is also mulling to have a separate security agency and changing guards every 15 days so that the nexus will not be created with the university staff, he added.

The minister himself has inquired the matter and accepted there are loopholes in the system. “The problem of answer sheets leakage or tampering usually takes place during 72 hours after depositing it at the University exam Centre before sending it for checking. The answer sheets are sent out with the help of local staff and kept back at the exam Centre after re-writing them,” the minister said. Mr Tawde also pointed out the load on the examination centre which deals with various exams with less staff.

The Mumbai police on May 22 busted the scam involving examination papers. The officials have arrested a few staffers from the University, including clerks and custodians. The case came to light when the Bhandup police received a tip that an agent was meeting some students to give them answer papers. The officers were surprised since most of the time it was the question paper that was leaked and wondered what good a leaked answer paper could do. While the current scam was busted in connection with mechanical engineering papers, the police suspects the same could be going in other streams and branches too.