The University of Madras has constituted a five-member committee to inquire into how 116 candidates managed to take the online examinations without having registered as students of the Institute of Distance Education.
Four members of the committee are from the Syndicate.
C. Chockalingam, Syndicate member and Director of Legal Studies Directorate, is the convener of the committee.
B. Venugopal, professor and head of the Department of Legal Studies; Chitti Annapurna, head of the Department of Hindi; D. Sathyavan, Syndicate member and in-charge head of Department of Econometrics; and Elangovan Vellaichamy, Dean - Academic and head of the Department of Biochemistry, are the other members.
An official said the committee had started its inquiries and would provide directions and guidelines to avoid a repeat of such an act in the future.
‘Not a physical exam’
“This happened because the exam was conducted online. In a physical exam, there are enough checks to prevent such fraud,” said an official.
Last year, as a one-time final chance, candidates enrolled in the IDE in various programmes were given the opportunity to write the exam and clear arrears, if any. When the university began processing the results, it was found that some candidates who had never registered with the university had taken the examination through study centres. Their results were withheld.
Of the 117 candidates who were identified, one person’s name had been entered twice, an IDE official said.
