19 September,2014 01:10 PM IST | | Niranjan Medhekar and Dattatraya Adhalge
Many students of a Pune college have received HSC exam hall tickets without scanned photographs on it; meanwhile, board officials and college authorities are busy blaming each other
Hall ticket
In a major lapse, about 20 students of Tikaram Jagannath College at Khadki have received their hall tickets for the repeaters' exam on September 29, without their scanned photographs. While Maharashtra State Board officials and college authorities are blaming each other, sources in the board said that such a lapse is unacceptable, as hall tickets with manually pasted photographs can be misused to place dummy candidates during the exam.
The college has decided to check valid photo Id of the students before allowing them to sit for the exam. Pic/Dattatraya Adhalge
A couple of hall tickets, which these reporters saw on Thursday, have the signature and stamp of the college principal, despite the missing pictures. When asked about this, principal Arun Mokashi did not reply. Now, the college authorities are asking students to paste their photographs on the hall tickets and only after verifying the students' identities they will be allowed to appear for the exam.
(Left) The State Board head office at Shivaji Nagar. Principal Arun Mokashi says he will not allow students to paste photographs on hall tickets without valid photo identity proof
Almost 350 repeaters from Tikaram Jagannath College will appear in this exam. Incidentally, this is the third board examination in which the state board had accepted exam forms of SSC and HSC students online to prevent the misuse of hall tickets.
Almost 350 repeaters from Tikaram Jagannath College will appear in the exam on September 29
The college had appointed separate clerical staff to upload the exam forms. "Ideally, every student should submit his or her exam form online. But, considering their age, the college gave the responsibility of form submission to us. We submitted the forms in eight days. In one case, the student hadn't pasted his photo. But, despite sending forms along with photographs for others, the board issued hall tickets without them. In some cases, maybe because of the size of the photo, it has not appeared on the hall ticket," said one of the clerks who uploaded the forms.
"Last year, too, in October, students of different junior colleges received their online hall tickets without their photographs. But, if the lapses continue, it is definitely unacceptable. In a way, both the board and the college are helping malpractices in the exam," a senior board official, who did not want to be identified, said.
The state board has a separate electronic data process unit, which is supposed to ensure zero errors in exam hall tickets. When asked about the lapses, some of the staff working in this unit said these can happen if the college did not send exam forms in time, or the student didn't attach his or her photographs on the form.
Gangadhar Mhamane, chairman of the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education, said, "It is the responsibility of every junior college to ensure that all data and photographs of every candidate have been provided while filling the forms of the board exam. These are very few cases. I haven't heard of similar incidences in other institutes."
Principal Mokashi said, "All the repeaters are from our college and we know each of them. However, without valid photo identity proof, I am not allowing them to paste their photographs on the hall tickets."
