Mumbai University mess worsens, 28K answer sheets are still missing

In a meeting held at the university’s Fort campus on Monday, officials said the results of more than 75,000 students are still pending.

The University of Mumbai is far from finishing the process of announcing results with more than 28,400 answer scripts still being ‘misplaced’ or not found. In a meeting held at the university’s Fort campus on Monday, officials said the results of more than 75,000 students are still pending.

(HT File)

Although results of only eight of the 477 examinations held between March and May this year are pending, the number of students awaiting their individual results is higher because the university is still looking for lost answer scripts.

HT had last week reported how the university was searching for ‘misplaced’ answer booklets, with officials claiming the answer sheets could either be in a warehouse, misplaced in the assessment software or lost altogether.

“The search is on and we are using all mechanisms possible to trace these papers. We believe some of the answer scripts might not be scanned so a physical and a logistical search is on at present,” said Arjun Ghatule, in-charge controller of examination and evaluation, MU.

Ghatule said various reasons have led to the answer booklets being misplaced and these include wrong question paper codes being filled in at the time of scanning and uploading of papers, papers lost during transmission of answer scripts from the examination house godown to the scanning centre or a programming bug. “We are brainstorming to find new ways to override any technical bugs and find all the answer booklets that are lost in the software first,” he said.

With thousands of answer booklets still pending for assessment, MU officials blamed the numbers on the fact that almost 40-45% papers from every department were called for moderation this year.

According to university rules, moderation is only conducted for 10-15% of answer scripts of students who have either scored above 75% or below 35% in the paper. However, figures revealed by the university show in Management, Technology and Arts departments, moderation stood at 45%, 43% and 41% respectively this year.

“Over and above the 17.65 lakh answer scripts that were evaluated this time, another 6.87 lakh had to be moderated as well so the total figure was above 24 lakh, making the assessment process more lengthy for our teachers,” said Dhiren Patel, acting pro vice-chancellor of the university at present.

Following the result debacle, the university has received close to 10,000 grievances through their help desk and another 2,095 on the online grievance cell. Similarly, the university has also received more than 22,000 applications for re-evaluation from students.

Meanwhile, the university has also announced tentative dates for exams for the current batch of students. Except for the repeater exam that will be held in the second week of October, all other exams will be held after Diwali. Third-year degree and MA MSc exams will be held between November second week and the end of December, said university officials.