Get ready to get electronic educational certificates

MUMBAI:

Your marksheet, degree and certificates would soon be digitalised on the line of dematerialisation of share certificates.

The ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) has formed a special task force (STF) under S.G Dhande, Director of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur to work on the project. The STF, which has been asked to prepare draft legislation for Parliament, is going to incorporate suggestions given by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Mumbai while digitalising the certificates.

The need for electronic educational certificated arrived because of rampant prevalence of forgery.

A team under the leadership of P.Kandaswamy, Head of Zone-2, CBI, Mumbai recently unearthed a major racket where they found 1,576 forged degrees, mark sheets and provisional certificates of 9 universities in Maharashtra.

The CBI stumbled upon these details following a Bombay High Court direction for investigation into fake degree racket. The HC direction had come in September last year in response to a petition filed for inquiry into the appointment of a lecturer at Siddharth College. The lecturer was alleged to have obtained a fake Bachelor of Arts degree from a university Andhra Pradesh. Using this degree the lecturer did LLB from Mumbai University and on that basis got a job at Siddharth College.

Kandaswamy told HT that the findings of CBI is only tip of the iceberg and a much bigger racket would come out on further investigation. The CBI had also handed over a report of its findings to Maharashtra Director General of Police in February this year. The details were also given to the Mumbai police.

The CBI suggested that a central regulatory body should maintain the electronic data. The suggestion said that all the universities should be directed to submit details of certain, degrees and diplomas issued by them to the regulatory body. For further safety, the CBI has suggested that the universities should maintain safety measures like photographs, biometric impression and signatures of every student.