Chandigarh
Come 2018-19 session, Panjab University (PU) will not provide paper degrees to students of post-graduate and PhD courses.
The academic awards, such as degrees, diplomas, certificates, marksheets, etc., will instead be made available online, providing students convenient access to their degrees without the risk of losing, spoiling or damaging them.
For this, the university has signed an agreement with the National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL), a central securities depository based in Mumbai, for uploading the degrees on the National Academy Depository (NAD), an online storehouse of academic awards.
Students will have to register themselves on NAD where all degrees and academic awards will be made available for easy retrieval for any purpose in the future.
“We are uploading the data from 2016-17 onwards. At present, we are doing it only for PG and PhD courses. We will try to do it for under-graduate courses as well in the near future,” PU controller of examinations (CoE) professor Parvinder Singh said.
Prof Singh said PU had initiated workshops and seminars for principals, fellows and other stakeholders to spread awareness on NAD. Besides, a NAD cell and steering committee had been established at PU with the CoE as its nodal officer.
Secure option?
Prof Singh said the degrees will be 100% secure and authentic on NAD, and there will be no risk of forgery. “Candidates will be able to log in and download their degree any time, any place, as these will be permanently available on NAD. This will help save both time and money,” he said.
“In the past four months, the examination branch has received 8,773 queries for transcript verification, 3,680 for reissue of DMC and 490 for correction of name. Transcript verification takes up to three weeks, reissue of DMC takes two weeks, while and correction of name is done in a week,” the CoE said.
The varsity also received 487 applications for provisional degrees in the past four months.
“I wish to make the system online to an extent that we can reduce the inconvenience faced by students regarding examinations and results,” Prof Singh added.
PU is also planning to set up workstations at each department to connect them through intranet for sharing information.
