Chennai: After revaluation scam rocked the Anna University, the University of Madras has decided to evaluate more than 11 lakh answer scripts on its four campuses to avoid irregularities.
To manage space crunch in university, the iconic Senate House building likely to be used as one of the valuation centres, officials said.
The directorate of vigilance and anti-corruption has unearthed a major revaluation scam in which officials had allegedly boosted the marks after taking money from students. The scam happened during the revaluation camp held at the University College of Engineering in Tindivanam. Following the revaluation scam, the University of Madras has decided to strengthen its existing evaluation process by grading the answer scripts within its campuses to rule out external influences.
For every semester, the university is evaluating answer scripts of 1.5 lakh students studying in affiliated colleges.
During the evaluation of April/May 2018 answer scripts, the university had set up 14 evaluation centres - 10 centres within the university and rest outside the university.
“We want to evaluate all the answer scripts within our four campuses from this semester to have full control over the evaluation. It will also help to speed up the process. University will dedicate one additional controller of examinations to oversee evaluation process and the university top officials will monitor the process regularly,” said P.Duraisamy, Vice-Chancellor, University of Madras.
The revaluation is usually done within the university and normally the answer scripts with huge marks variation will be evaluated again by an examiner.
“Of 11 lakh answer scripts, students sought revaluation to only 20,457 answer scripts. Around 48 per cent of these scripts had marks change and over 90 per cent of the scripts with marks change had an increase of fewer than 20 marks,” he said.
The answer scripts of Institute of Distance Education exams will also be evaluated inside the university. The answer scripts of April/May exams were evaluated at six centres and only one centre was given outside the university.
“From next semester, the university will seek an explanation from the faculty members in cases of the huge variation of marks after revaluation. So far, they were not held responsible for the variation of marks,” university officials said.
The university is currently searching for large halls on the university to conduct the evaluation inside the campus. “Apart from the department halls, we will also use the famous Senate House which has the huge hall for evaluation,” officials added.
