NGP News- Crucial file goes missing from Nagpur University

NAGPUR: It appears as if the Nagpur University officials can go to any extent to protect the colleges owned by politicians and education barons.

This time, the NU officials have allegedly lost the file containing details of MCA 'illegal' admission scam which led to delay in taking the decision by over two months. As a result, the 10 students who were declared 'illegal' by NU had already lost their academic year due to this delay.

Pro-VC Mahesh Yenkie has now said that he would conduct an enquiry into the missing file. Terming the entire incident as "unfortunate", he informed that he had already talked to controller of examinations (CoE) Vilas Ramteke about this. "We prepared a new file after the old one was not traced and took a decision in this regard. We also sought legal opinion before moving ahead," he said.

NU had cancelled admissions and exams of about 10 students after TOI ran a series of reports as to how these colleges run by politicians and education barons blatantly flouted norms by admitting "ineligible" students since the last two years.

Varsity sources claimed the file that was supposed to move to NU standing counsel Bhanudas Kulkarni for legal opinion about a month back but it never reached him. Former CoE Siddarth Kane who had told TOI on August 30 that the file was dispatched to Kulkarni for legal opinion tried to pass the buck on his subordinates for the mess stating that he had moved it to the General Exam Section and he wasn't aware of what happened afterwards.

"Even I came to know about missing file recently. I had forwarded it with my comments. I even told Ramteke before handing over the charge to him about that file," he said.

Ramteke did not take calls from TOI. Kulkarni in the past had told TOI that he had not received any file and his opinion was never sought in this regard.

Sources disclosed that this was not the only time the file was 'deliberately lost' by NU officials to protect the erring colleges and also some of their officials who were indulged in wrongdoings. Earlier in 2004, an investigation report prepared by retired high court justice A Mardikar was mysteriously lost and was untraceable even after lodging a police complaint.

Sources claimed that MCA file was deliberately misplaced considering the fact that renowned colleges like Ramdeobaba Kamla Nehru College of Engineering, GH Raisoni College, and Wardha's Agnihotri College were involved in illegally admitting 'ineligible' students for minting money. These colleges had charged hefty fees in excess of Rs 70,000 from each student for providing admission to MCA.

It took over a month for NU to find just six 'ineligible' students after the scam came to fore. But hardly in the past had NU taken any action against erring colleges which led to repetition of such scams, sources claimed.