VTU app shows Karnataka engineering students faking internships with details of bars and gyms

“We found that the location of an internship was a gym, another one was a bar, a technology company in Denmark, but in the same name, there was a salon in Bengaluru where the student had enrolled. We will blacklist those companies,” a VTU official said.

“In one case, the GPS location showed us an isolated vacant land, and there was no company. Some engineering students have enrolled with companies in the food and hospitality industry, which has nothing to do with their branches. We are going to blacklist the companies as well as summon students to rectify their mistakes. We are not initiating action now but letting them off with warnings. But in future, we will initiate action,” the official said.

Vice-Chancellor S Vidyashankar said in a statement, “If students bring fake certificates from some companies and submit them to VTU, it will not work. We will verify everything. Students must show their smartness in work, not in attempting such fraud.”

More than 85,000 students are qualified to do the internships. Engineering students under VTU must provide a six-month internship certificate while they are in the seventh and eighth semesters of their course. Nine credits have been allocated for the internship. VTU has a portal for companies offering internships to register.

Although VTU has made it mandatory that the students are paid for the internships by the companies, some students allege that the companies are demanding money from them.

An engineering student told indianexpress.com, “I have been asked Rs 40,000 to pay for the internship. There is a huge demand (students) and less supply (companies). There are a lot of fraudulent companies that have collected our details from the portal and are approaching us for money,” the student said.