CHENNAI: In a bid to digitise academic records, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has asked all technical institutions approved by it to upload academic awards on Digilocker, under the National Academic Depository (NAD). The initiative is aimed at preventing educational institutions from withholding certificates and academic records to forcefully retain students and faculty.
The council, through a circular on Monday, also asked the institutes to designate nodal officers who would be in-charge of uploading the documents and set up dedicated NAD cells. The details of these cells should also be made available on their website. Students have been asked to register on the NAD website.
The NAD can be used by teachers, students and alumni of educational institutions to access their academic awards online and produce them for verification while applying for educational programmes, employment and other opportunities.
Academic institutions including various Central universities, State universities, private universities, higher educational institutions and school boards are uploading their awards on NAD. Earlier, NAD was being implemented through NSOL Database Management Limited (NDML) and CDSL Ventures Limited (CVL). It was discontinued by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (now Ministry of Education) in March this year.
Digilocker is the single depository for NAD and the previous depositories are not part of it now. “For seamless transfer of data from NDML and CVL to NAD-Digilocker, UGC has written to both depositories to transfer the data and to Digilocker to take charge as sole depository of NAD,” the AICTE said.