BPUT HELPS EXAM SCAM: WHITHER IS GOING TECHNO EDUCATION?

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Whither is techno education going in Orissa? Members of the Academic Council (AC) of Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT) that met at the conference hall of Government College of Engineering and Technology (CET ) on March 10 at 3.30 PM to give “special” consideration to students’ demand for unhindered acquisition of degree, never put this question to themselves as they danced to the tune of private college owners, who fetch huge profit by assuring students of sure success in bagging B.Tech and other degrees of similar face.

The students, who were demanding for obliteration of the stipulation that clearing the backlog subjects of 1st and 2nd semesters would be prerequisite to invoke advantage of “special Examination” to pass in all the failed subjects to fetch their desired degrees have withdrawn their strike, though the resolution of the AC in this matter is yet under cover. Might be, they have succeeded.

In fact, there was no meaning in not allowing students with backlog of the first two semesters to pass the final exam, when the University has already paved the way for students unable to pass in subjects from the 3rd semester onwards to avail advantage of the machination of manipulation it has, since March 28, 2009, provided for under the cover of “special Examinations after the 8th semester” to help failing students purchase their degrees.

How this provision for manipulation is working is discernible in results last published by BPUT and is horrific.

A student has passed in 10 subjects in one slot of “special examinations” whereas another student has passed in 20 subjects and yet another in 21 subjects at a time though they had not been able to pass in those subjects in so many exams during the entire period of four years of their study in the colleges.

But the monstrosity of the scam cannot be fully realized unless one knows how a student who failed to pass in 37 subjects as against 45 prescribed in the B.Tech course, during the period of four years comprising eight semesters, has passed in all those subjects in a single slot using the “Special Examinations after the 8th Semester”, the results of which are declared by the BPUT in December 2009 and viewable to any in its website.

Named after Biju, BPUT is perhaps true to his true color. The Khanna Commission Report has details of scams he executed cleanly in the guise of industrial development in Orissa. Even he had neatly steered the State to have a junk storehouse styled as IDC for using it to get rid of his heavily loosing industries at tremendous profit for his own pockets while branding this treachery as his sacrifice for the State. In these pages there are elaborations on this and many other scams he was involved with when his every scam was preceded with such projection of his noble motives that the victims of the scams were unable to understand as to how their future was being doomed thereby. BPUT seems to be following his footprints in spangling the system with scam scopes under the cover of “Special Examinations” in “home centers” while painting the trick as rays of Orissa’s rise in the sky of the techno educational world.

Showing how the BPUT works to appease the students, in the “background” to its “clarification to students’ demand” revealed in Notice No 4129/09 it has noted:

In order to ease out extremely weak students from the BPUT system ( who would not have the capacity to complete a degree with a prescribed minimum of a final Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) of 6.0, the committee had recommended that a student would have to quit if he has less than 4.50 Semester Grade Point Average( SGPA) in three consecutive semesters ( this was to apply for exams. held w.e.f Odd Semester 2007 ).

Recently on the 28th. of March, 2009 the Academic Council met and decided to withdraw the 4.50 SGPA rule from the 5th. semester onwards; that means no student would be asked to quit once he / she has crossed the 4th. semester .

Further, in the Special Exams. after the 8th. semester, all papers for 3rd. and 4th. semesters were also included. That means, all back papers of 2nd.; 3rd. and 4th. years can now be cleared in the Special Exams if a student has not been able to clear them already in the various previous regular exams. ( he carries unlimited number of back papers to higher semesters today.)

This system of sure success has been further strengthened by providing for such exams to be held in “Home centers”, which are created specifically in the respective colleges of the failed students.

Such ingenuity of helping the colleges help their failed students to pass was steered through the AC by the former Vice Chancellor, Omkar Mohanty, in connivance with the operators whose sole aim is to fish out mints of money.

It is a wild business of black money. The more deficient is the student, the more is the flow of black money into the coffers of the operators of these joints. Money is collected against pledge of success and the owners of the breeding houses of such success were successful in creating the method legalized in BPUT AC as cited supra.

What the Chancellor of BPUT is doing in this matter? Planners knew that Vice-Chancellors of Universities of a State, coming on recommendations of committees created through official tricks, may stay susceptible to political pressure. Therefore they had vested the supreme authority of University management in the Chancellor who none but the Governor of the State could be and the law was so consciously made that the Governor would have never to act according to advice of the Ministry while acting as the Chancellor. Therefore, it is clear that a Governor may be a mute white elephant in management of a State; but he is not supposed to be so in management of any University within the State. So, should he not wake up to his responsibilities as Chancellor of BPUT to save techno education from the machinations of scams?

Should he not review as to how could students, who failed to pass in regular examinations in regular semesters during the entire period of their regular studentship, pass in all the failed subjects in single slots by appearing in the so-called ‘Special Examinations after the 8th semester” so easily?

Whither techno education is really going in Orissa, should he not say?