Biometric attendance in Telangana colleges

Hyderabad: In an effort to bring in accountability in functioning of UG and PG colleges, the government is emphasizing on biometric attendance, which will be implemented strictly from the coming academic year.

Attendance of teaching faculty and students in each college will be recorded daily. Colleges will be asked to send the forenoon and afternoon attendance data to the university every fortnight.

JNTU-Hyderabad, which affiliates engineering, pharmacy, MBA and MCA colleges, will be implementing biometric attendance in two phases.
In the first phase, biometric data of teachers in all colleges will be recorded and this will be extended to students.

JNTU registrar Dr N. Yadaiah said that the varsity wants to lead by example and would install biometric devices in all departments on campus for faculty and staff. “Some of the private colleges were found to be having deficiencies on faculty records. Some teachers are being removed in the middle of the year while some names are figuring in lists of more than one college etc. All these things can be checked time to time once biometric attendance gets underway,” the registrar said.

However, this initiative is not likely to be a smooth affair as far as degree and PG colleges are concerned.

Degree colleges want the authorities to implement the same in all government degree and PG colleges.

“To our understanding, the authorities are only insisting that the 1,000-odd private colleges to take steps to record biometric attendance of students and teachers. They should also implement it in all government colleges. There should not be two set of rules for the same degree students studying in private and degree colleges,” Mr Gouri Satish from Degree Colleges Association said.