After marklist scam, Nagpur University is without bosses

The scandal which claimed the who’s who of the university came to light when a couple of foreign embassies sent in copies of some degrees for verification. The degrees were found to be fake and after the local press played it up, an investigation was reluctantly launched. Interestingly, one of the members of this fact-finding committee was found to be involved in the scam and arrested later.

The degrees and marklists were priced upwards of Rs 20,000 and the rate varied with thestream and the need of the buyer. The scandal boiled over when Assistant Registrar Yadav Kohchade was caught by Anti Corruption Bureau officials while handing over a bribe of Rs 7 lakh to a police officer. Soon skeletons began to tumble out.

Kohchade, who rose from a part-time driver to Assistant Registrar in less than 15 years, was in charge of the revaluation section. He told policemen that the going rate to get marks increased by a desired margin ranged between Rs 2,000 and Rs 10,000. Some engineering students were willing to pay even more, he is said to have confessed.

Soon, half-a-dozen or so employees and agents involved in the racket were in the police dragnet. Chief of the examination section Prakash Mistry and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering Hemant Thakre, who was a member of the fact-finding committee, are now in police custody.

The body of Assistant Registrar (Examinations) Jairam Shende was found floating in Nagpur’s Ambazari lake yesterday. Police were of the view that he took his lifefearing arrest and humiliation.

On Sunday, Vice-Chancellor Bhalchandra Chopane and Pro-Vice Chancellor Yoganand Kale sent in their resignations to Maharashtra Governor and Chancellor Dr P.C. Alexander owning moral responsibility for the state of affairs.

Now, the university has an officiating Vice-Chancellor, an officiating Registrar and an officiating Controller of Examinations. Vacancies caused by the arrests have been filled up by employees very reluctant to take up the job and come under further scrutiny.

“We found the administration in a state of total collapse,” said Management Councillor A.K. De who headed the fact-finding committee. The state of affairs was so bad that the university office had virtually become a market of marks and marklists.

Veteran academics having long association with the university are not surprised. The cause of the malady, they say, is the faulty system of recruitment. Over the last 10 or 15 years the university engaged more than 600 daily wage workers where about200 were needed. All of them entered either upon the recommendation of some elected members of university bodies or by allegedly paying bribes to Class I officials.

Vacancies to regular posts, as and when they occurred, were also filled up in similar fashion by first `absorbing’ the daily-wagers as fixed-pay workers. Soon, enterprising touts gave the racket business-like dimensions and clerks and supervisors began turning into millionaires.

Today, the air in the university’s administrative office is thick with suspicion. Chancellor Alexander has appointed Nagpur’s Divisional Commissioner as officiating Vice-Chancellor. The police are looking for more and leading lawyers of Nagpur are busy with the briefs of those who have been caught.

This is not the first time that the university was hit by a scandal. Over three years ago, The Indian Express had reported the theft of several hundred blank marklists from the university which had gone undetected by the authorities. But the university bosses didnot learn their lessons then.