Mumbai: Holding Mumbai University Vice Chancellor Sanjay Deshmukh responsible for the delay in declaration of undergraduate and postgraduate results, the Congress has demanded a judicial probe into the crisis.
“There were no preparations before implementing the online assessment. MeritTrac, the third party service provider, was selected without following a proper tendering process,” said Mumbai Congress president Sanjay Nirupam at a press conference on Friday.
Mr. Nirupam said the VC should have taken teachers into confidence before finalising the service provider. “Under whose pressure was the contract given? As far as I understand, people related to the BJP are directly or indirectly involved in MeritTrac.”
Meanwhile, till 7.30 p.m. on Friday, the fifth non-instructional day in colleges, 41,965 answer sheets were evaluated and 36,541 were moderated. A total of 3,620 teachers were involved in the exercise. As many as 3,70,290 answer sheets are still to be evaluated.
M.A. Khan, Registrar, said around 25 commerce teachers from Nagpur University are helping in the assessment. After software installation was done in Pune and Aurangabad on Thursday, around 50 law teachers from Aurangabad and 50 commerce and management teachers from Pune extended their help on Friday.
According to teachers, complaints of failed log-ins and other technical glitches have drastically come down.
Mr. Nirupam demanded the removal of Mr. Deshmukh along with Ministers Vinod Tawde and Ravindra Waikar if the July 31 deadline to declare results was not met. If they were not removed, he said, Congress workers will gherao the university on August 2.
Two days ago, Bhalchandra Mungekar, former Vice Chancellor of the university, had said that Mr. Deshmukh should step down immediately, and alleged that the process of selecting MeritTrac was not transparent.
On Thursday, the university had decided to extend the non-instructional days for Arts, Law and Commerce students from July 28 to 31. The circular issued by Deepak Wasave, officiating director, Board of Examinations and Evaluation, had congratulated the teachers on correcting over one lakh papers and requested their support till the deadline. “The Science and Technology department has corrected 95% of answer sheets and the Management 90%. The Arts faculty is done with 80% of the assessment,” it read.
The university has requested the examiners and moderators of Science and Technology, and Management faculties to work after academic hours and during the weekend.
