The Opposition has demanded a judicial probe into the illegal moderation granted to Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) and Bachelor of Computer Applications (BCA) students in Kerala University.
“It has become a habit for the government to order a Crime Branch probe into all the irregularities related to various universities in the state. None of these probes have gone any far. It is in this context we want a sitting judge to conduct a time-bound probe into the latest scam,” Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala said in the Assembly on Monday.
Higher Education Minister K T Jaleel, however, closed the debate in the Assembly saying a Crime Branch enquiry is already on. Nonetheless, he said that the government had taken the charges of malpractice very seriously. The Opposition staged a walk out in protest.
The issue was raised by Congress MLA Roji M John as an adjournment motion in the Assembly. “It is for the first time in the history of Kerala University that failed students were awarded illegal marks by tampering with the official records of the University,” Roji said. “Earlier too such things have happened but no one had dared to tweak the University records,” he added.
An internal probe had found that moderation was generously awarded flouting all rules in 12 BBA and BCA examinations spread over three years from June 2016. Initially, such illegal moderation was detected in 16 examinations. The moderation awarded in four of these were later found to be legal.
“The marks tampering was done by hacking into the University's computer network. This was done not once but many times,” Roji said. “It is hard to believe that this was the handiwork of one or two employees. It is also strange that the University's computer section had not taken action even though it was aware that 78 user IDs and passwords were being misused,” Roji said.
The reason, according to Roji, was the involvement of CPM employees' union leaders in the scam. Roji alleged that both the beneficiaries and the University employees who had committed the crime were related to the CPM. “This is why not even a departmental action had been initiated against the culprits,” he said.
The Congress leader said the LDF had a long history of mark tampering. He reminded the house of the marks scam related to the appointment to the University assistant post in 2008.
He said the situation in the University was so chaotic that the police had stumbled upon University answer sheets in the houses of gold smugglers and murder accused. “It has now come to such a pass that university answer sheets are found in the house of any criminal the police is after,” Roji said.
Further, he alleged that the University was planning to appoint as examination controller a CPM employees' union leader who was only an assistant professor. “I can tell which person you are appointing tomorrow today itself,” Roji said. “Even the security standing guard in front of the University office knows,” he added.
According to UGC norms, the person holding the post of the examination controller should have at least 10 years experience as professor or principal.
Kerala Congress (Mani) leader P J Joseph said that the spate of controversies under K T Jaleel's watch would diminish the credibility of degress granted by the universities in Kerala.
“The entrance examination was introduced because there was a suspicion about the marks provided by the University,” said Joseph who was a former education minister. “Now there is a thinking that some weightage should be given to University examination results for admission to professional colleges. But if this is the case, can we depend on the University marks,” Joseph asked.
Congress MLA V D Satheesan alleged that Jaleel had intervened in preparing the examination calendar of Kerala University flouting UGC norms. The minister did not respond to any of the charges levelled against him.
