Eight Mumbai University employees were arrested for their role in the answer sheet scam related to the first-semester engineering papers. A major reshuffle of the staff members followed this arrest. The varsity has transferred or replaced 69 of its staff members who were a part of the centralised assessment process. Of this, 59 were working on a contractual basis, and they have been replaced, while other permanent members have been transferred.
This move might in-turn cause a delay in the declaration of the results, not just for the engineering stream but for other departments as well. “The process of evaluation is on. However, there could be a slight delay in declaring the results for a few engineering branches,” said MA Khan, Registrar, MU.
The scam came to light after Bhandup police arrested a group of eight people that included permanent and temporary staffs of the University, who were allegedly involved in arranging answer sheets for students to rewrite their exam for a price. The students deliberately used to leave blank spaces on the exam answer sheets. The lower-rung officials of the University used to steal these sheets of engineering subject papers from the examination centre at the Kalina campus of Mumbai University. These papers were then handed over to students, who would then fill in the right answers in the blank spaces left by them. The papers would then be kept in the examination centre again. Each student is suspected to have paid anything between Rs 10,000 and Rs 20,000 to get access to one paper.