Absence of evaluator list caused Mumbai university result delay, says firm hired for online process

University claimed that the firm was handed over the required data at the beginning of the project

Three days before deadline to declare degree college results, MeritTrac, the Bengaluru-based information technology firm carrying out the on-screen assessment of answer sheets, claimed that the University of Mumbai is yet to provide them with a complete list of evaluators causing delay and snags in the assessment process.

University of Mumbai has to announce the results by July 31. (HT FILE)

The firm said they had requested a consolidated list of all evaluators in a particular format, but the university has not given it yet. University officials, however, denied these allegations and claimed that the firm was handed over the required data at the beginning of the project.

Speaking to HT, Nagendran S, executive vice-president of MeritTrac said to successfully implement on-screen marking process, one requires complete details about all the evaluators, including the subjects they assess. “These details were available locally only at colleges and centralised assessment process (CAP) centre. The university didn’t have a consolidated list. We are still receiving evaluator data from varsity officials,” he said.

“Unless and until we get the data in a particular format, we can’t generate username and passwords for evaluators. But the list provided by the university was riddled with error,” he said.

Rubbishing these claims, Deepak Wasave, in-charge director, board of examination and evaluation at MU, said, “On the first day of the project, we gave them a list of around 10,000 evaluators. It was their job to put it in the format they wanted,” he said.

Wasave, however, accepted that the varsity kept adding new evaluators to the list.

He also blamed MeritTrac for slow servers, problems in generating OTPs and mix-up of answer sheets at CAP centres. The company denied the responsibility of these issues. “There are several factors behind these issues. Sometimes the connectivity of the local area network (LAN) is poor. The generation of OTP also depends on the telecom network. Mix-up of answer sheets occurred due to their mislabelling,” said Nagendran.