The Bharathiar University here has become the first university in the country to install closed circuit television cameras (CCTV) to monitor the National Eligibility Test (NET), conducted on Sunday across India by the University Grants Commission. The feeds from the camera will be monitored at the university.
Vice-Chancellor G. James Pitchai, who inaugurated the new system, told reporters that the university was planning to extend this system of monitoring examinations to the distance education examination venues across India besides its Centre for Participatory and Online Programmes (CPOP).
“This system will enhance the quality of examinations and set a role model to other universities and institutions. This will avoid any sort of malpractice in the examination centres.”
The cameras were installed in all the nine examination venues of Coimbatore. Dr. Pitchai said that 9,358 candidates, including 59 with visual disability, from 29 States had registered to take the NET at Coimbatore. Of these, 7,083 candidates turned up for the examination. Of the 48 subjects, the highest number of registrations was for computer science and applications which had 2,450 registrations followed by Commerce (1,560), Management (1,015) and English (1,005). The lowest number registration was one for the subjects of visual arts, criminology, Assamese and Urdu.
The university had begun issuing smart mark sheets and degree certificates from May this year, containing uniquely encoded QR code in an encrypted form. The code will be linked to a centralised database containing details that can be accessed to electronically verify the authenticity of the document.
