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Wadettiwar alleges paper leak during PhD fellowship exam, SPPU denies claim
SPPU SET department denies any paper leak during the Sarthi/Barti PhD fellowship exam as the leader of Opposition Vijay Wadettiwar said question papers were made available before the exam began in Pune and Nagpur
PUNE The Savitribai Phule Pune University’s (SPPU) SET department denied any paper leak during the Sarthi/Barti PhD fellowship exam even as the leader of Opposition Vijay Wadettiwar said question papers were made available before the exam began in Pune and Nagpur.
This was the second time the exam was held after previously students alleged that they were given a question paper of 2019 exam on December 20.
Wadettiwar posted on X saying, “Did the honest examinees conspire to crack the PhD fellowship paper directly today so as not to shine? In Pune, Nagpur, the incident of paper leak has come to light... This exam has been taken twice and has been messed up both times. If you demand action against the accused, home minister Devendra Fadnavis says to bring the evidence. If you raise questions on the results of the Talathi exam, the revenue minister threatens action. Now take action this time, don’t threaten the examinees.”
The exam conducted by Sarathi, BARTI, Mahajyoti for the joint screening of the fellowship was held between10am to 11am through the examination centres in the cities of Pune, Kolhapur, Nagpur and Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar.
“Four sets of question papers namely A, B, C and D were printed for the said examination. The said question paper sets were printed confidentially by two different printing presses, so there may be variations in the printing pattern. The said question paper sets were printed in a highly confidential manner and following the prescribed security standards and were delivered to the respective examination centres in sealed form,” aid Prof Balasaheb Kapadnis SET exam coordinator from SPPU.
“The entire examination process is also conducted very transparently at all indirect centres. Therefore, the allegations made regarding the splitting of the said examination papers are completely baseless and have no truth in them,” he said.
Students expressed confusion over the way the exam was being conducted at Smt Kashibai Navale College of Engineering in Pune and Kamla Nehru Vidyalaya in Nagpur.
Confusion arose when it was found that two types of question papers were given to the students during the fellowship test conducted for the fellowship grant offered to students.
As a result, the students boycotted the examination at Pune as well as other centres in the state. They are now demanding to get direct fellowship without an exam.
After the fiasco during the first exam in December, the SPPU SET department was given the responsibility by the higher education department of organising the fellowship test for the fellowships offered through Barti, Sarathi, and Mahajyoti.
In the examination held in December, the question paper of the SET examination 2019 was given to the students, so the students demanded that this examination should be cancelled. After that, the exam was conducted again on January 4.
The SET department had outsourced the task of printing the question papers to a third-party organization. The organization printed the A and B question papers and sealed them.
As per the information given by the SPPU administration, as they did not print C and D only the university administration had to print the C and D question papers themselves.
As the university did not have the system to seal the printed question papers, question papers C and D were sent to the examination centre without being sealed. The university administration was fully aware of this.
For Wednesday’s exam, 3,475 students were going to take the exam in Pune and Nagpur.
The SET department of the university has already conducted the exam for about 1.5 lakh students from the states of Maharashtra and Goa on January 4.
