The governing body of the autonomous Maharaja’s College, Ernakulam, has put on hold a proposal to hand over the development of a comprehensive campus software system to Kerala Electrical and Allied Engineering Limited (KEL).
A decision to hand over the estimated ₹70-lakh work was taken due to multiple reasons. Governing council chairman N. Ramakanthan said the Director of Collegiate Education was yet to give the official nod for the project.
The council is of the view that any decision on such a proposal should be taken only after getting the government’s administrative and technical sanction. Moreover, errors have been reported in the KEL software, which was used on a pilot mode for admission to postgraduate programmes in the new academic year. It was found that a registration fee of ₹125 was collected per candidate instead of the prescribed fee of ₹100, he said.
The college authorities had decided to rope in the services of the software wing of the State public sector undertaking following the marklist controversy involving P.M. Arsho, State secretary of the Students’ Federation of India, in June. A student of the integrated programme in Archaeology and Material Cultural Studies, he had come under fire after he was declared passed in the marklist of the third semester exam though he did not reportedly appear for it. The authorities had blamed the National Informatics Centre (NIC) for the technical glitches in its exam software for the alleged errors and mix-up in the marklist.
Mr. Ramakanthan said a meeting convened by the Minister for Higher Education had entrusted the Director of Collegiate Education to hold discussions with the NIC authorities on how to plug the technical glitches, besides resolving the communication gaps among the partnering agencies.
