The Syndicate of the University of Madras has suspended five persons, of whom two have since retired, on charge of indulging in malpractice in the Institute of Distance Education.
Among those suspended are two in the assistant registrar cadre; an attender and a woman assistant section officer. The case pertains to 116 candidates taking the examination without even registering for the courses. “After an inquiry, action has been taken with the approval of the Syndicate,” said Vice-Chancellor S. Gowri.
During COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, based on the State government’s recommendation, the University gave all students registered with the IDE since 1980-81 a one-time chance to clear arrears. In 2019, the University Grants Commission permitted candidates to take the examinations twice — in December 2019 and then in May 2020. The examinations were held in online mode in December 2020 in view of the COVID-19 lockdown, allowing candidates to take the exams from their home.
When the university prepared the finishing certificates, it noticed mismatch between the registrations and fee paid details and withheld their results. An internal inquiry revealed that the candidates had never paid tuition fee for any course of the IDE.
The Vice-Chancellor ordered a probe by a Syndicate Committee. C. Chockalingam, Director of Legal Studies Directorate, was the convener of the committee with B. Venugopal, professor and head of the Department of Legal Studies, Chitti Annapurna, head of the Department of Hindi, D. Sathyavan, Syndicate member and in-charge head of Department of Econometrics, and Elangovan Vellaichamy, Dean – Academic and head of the Department of Biochemistry, as its members.
The panel’s inquiry revealed that “the candidates had paid only examination fee by generating bogus numbers by using the facility provided for the benefit of students during pandemic situation. Moreover, these candidates appeared first time for the examination and have written all the papers in single attempt,” a university note said.
The committee found that some university employees had helped the 116 candidates in committing malpractice. Based on the committee’s recommendations, the university suspended assistant Registrar Tamilvanan, assistant section officer Ezhilarasi, attender Jhon Weslyn, retired assistant registrar N. Mohan Kumar, and a former section officer Santhakumar.
IDE Director K. Ravichandran said the committee had given the names to the Vice-Chancellor, who initiated action against them.
Source: https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/five-employees-of-madras-university-suspended-for-malpractices-in-ide/article65989043.ece
