The University of Mumbai is far from finishing the process of announcing results with more than 28,400 answer scripts still being ‘misplaced’ or not found. In a meeting held at the university’s Fort campus on Monday, officials said the results of more than 75,000 students are still pending.

Although results of only eight of the 477 examinations held between March and May this year are pending, the number of students awaiting their individual results is higher because the university is still looking for lost answer scripts.

HT had last week reported how the university searching for ‘misplaced’ answer booklets, with officials claiming the answer sheets could either in a warehouse, misplaced in the assessment software or lost altogether.

controller of examination

“The search is on and we are using all mechanisms possible to trace these papers. We believe some of the answer scripts might not be scanned so a physical and a logistical search is on at present,” said Arjun Ghatule, in-charge controller of examination and evaluation, MU.

Ghatule said various reasons have led to the answer booklets being misplaced and these include wrong question paper codes being filled in at the time of scanning and uploading of papers, papers lost during transmission of answer scripts from the examination house godown to the scanning centre or a programming bug. “We are brainstorming to find new ways to override any technical bugs and find all the answer booklets that are lost in the software first,” he said.

With thousands of answer booklets still pending for assessment, MU officials blamed the numbers on the fact that almost 40-45% papers from every departments called for moderation this year.

Evaluation of answer scripts

According to university rules, moderation only conducted for 10-15% of answer scripts of students who have either scored above 75% or below 35% in the paper. However, figures revealed by the university show in Management, Technology and Arts departments, moderation stood at 45%, 43% and 41% respectively this year.

“Over and above the 17.65 lakh answer scripts evaluated this time, another 6.87 lakh had to moderated as well so the total figure was above 24 lakh, making the assessment process more lengthy for our teachers,” said Dhiren Patel, acting pro vice-chancellor of the university at present.

Following the result debacle, the university has received close to 10,000 grievances through their help desk and another 2,095 on the online grievance cell. Similarly, the university has also received more than 22,000 applications for re-evaluation from students.

Meanwhile, the university has also announced tentative dates for exams for the current batch of students. Except for the repeater exam that will held in the second week of October, all other exams held after Diwali. Third-year degree and MA MSc exams held between November second week and the end of December, said university officials.