BENGALURU: Despite Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU), Belagavi, having an online question paper delivery system, concerns about safety of the papers have been raised again.
On Friday, students who took an exam on Thursday alleged that its question paper had been leaked earlier that day. According to them, half an hour before the exams, the question paper was allegedly circulated on social media and many came to know of this only a day after the exams!
“On Friday, some of my friends said that they got the question paper of Thursday’s exam on WhatsApp and when compared the two after the exams, they matched,” said a student who attempted the paper.
According to students, at 9.04 am, the paper was circulated on WhatsApp. The examination was scheduled to be held at 10 am.
The 2015 scheme paper of Mathematics II (repeaters paper) was handed out on Thursday at 10 am at all the engineering colleges in the State. The WhatsApp messages containing the leaked paper allegedly had been in circulation since 9 am, and this whole fiasco came to light only 24 hours later.
A student said, “As soon as we came to know of this, we cross-checked both the papers and were shocked to see that they matched. The allegedly leaked paper shows the download time as one hour before the exams. But as per rules, download of the question paper should be done only half an hour before the exams”.
Even the university authorities were shocked to hear of this and have taken this complaint seriously. Dr Karisiddappa, vice chancellor of VTU, said, “Even we got to know about this only a day after the exams were conducted. We have asked all colleges to submit a detailed report along with CCTV and videographed footage recorded during the question paper downloading, packing and distributing procedure.”
“The IT team of the university is already working on it and suspect miscreants’ hand in it. If the allegations are proven to be true, we will do justice to students by conducting a re-examination for that particular subject,” said the VC.
Meanwhile, this is not new for VTU. Recently, there were several examination-related notices that had been forged and circulated. The VTU officials have even lodged a cyber complaint about these issues but the paper leak has college managements concerned because it has an online question paper delivery system, which was introduced to ensure safety of question papers and avoid such malpractices.