Need for verifying engineering certificates obtained through distance edncation mode

Hyderabad: The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has stressed the need to check the validity of certificates relating to engineering courses obtained through distance mode by the employees working in various government departments.

The AICTE has sent a communication in this regard to technological universities and the State government in this regard.

It may be mentioned here that the AICTE had recently sent the communication to the Vice-Chancellors of the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological Universities (JNTU) in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, as well as to the State Chief Secretaries.

According to sources in the JNTU-Hyderabad, the AICTE communication followed an earlier direction from the Supreme Court.

The Apex Court in its order on November 3, 2017, had suspended all the degrees in the engineering courses awarded, through open and distance education learning mode during the academic years from 2001 to 2005.

However, many government employees and several others had enrolled in such courses offered by the universities like JRN Rajasthan Vidyapeeth, Udaipur of Rajasthan, IASE Sardarshahar, Rajasthan, AAI of Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh and VMRI in Salem in Tamil Nadu.

Those who completed the courses claimed promotions in their jobs. However, the apex court had directed suspension of the degrees in the matter of Orissa Lift Irrigation Corpo Ltd. Vs Rabi Sankar Patro Vs Ors, the official said.

The AICTE made it clear that the certificates awarded for engineering diplomas were not the subject matter of Supreme Court judges as clarified by the apex court.

And, for validation of suspended degrees the AICTE-UGC was directed to devise modalities to conduct appropriate tests both in writing as well as practical for the students concerned by giving not more than two chances to validate their degrees.

The degrees of those, who failed to pass the examinations in two chances, should be recalled and cancelled, it said.

It was against this backdrop that the AICTE-UGC had conducted the validation examinations in June and December 2018 across in India.

The results of the same had been declared in July 2018 for the first phase of the examination and in February 2019 for the second phase.

The mark lists and certificates of those who qualified had been updated on the AICTE website.

Accordingly, the AICTE requested the Chief Secretaries to circulate the information to the all the government departments and State public undertakings and advise the officials to cross-check with the results made available online.