The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has validated the degrees of students who acquired engineering degrees through open and distance learning (ODL), or correspondence mode, from four deemed-to-be universities between 2001 and 2005. AICTE and the University Grants Commision (UGC), under orders from the Supreme Court, had jointly conducted separate examinations in 2018 to validate the students' degrees.
AICTE, in an official notification, said: “AICTE-UGC conducted exams for these four Deemed to be universities in the months of June and December 2018 across India to validate the degrees awarded by them. The online certificates were provided to all successful candidates which validate the degrees awarded by the four Deemed to be Universities and as such they are valid degrees in all respect as per the Hon'ble Supreme Court decision dated November 3, 2017.”
AICTE and UGC were instructed to conduct examinations covering all subjects, both written and practical, for the students who graduated over 2001-2005. The students were given not more than two chances to pass the validation exam. The court had refused a similar validation exam for students who procured degrees after 2005.
Engineering Degrees By Correspondence
The Supreme Court in 2017 had restrained all deemed to be universities from offering distance any distance education course and invalidated the distance degrees from four deemed to be universities-JRN Rajasthan Vidyapeeth, Institute of Advanced Studies in Education in Rajasthan, Allahabad Agricultural Institute and Vinayaka Mission Research Foundation in Tamil Nadu.
The Supreme Court had noted that the distance courses offered by these institutions were not validated by the University Grants Commission (UGC) or the AICTE. The court had ruled that the approval granted by the Distance Education Council was illegal. The court had, however, allowed another chance for candidates of the 2001-2005 batch to validate their suspended degrees by appearing in a validation examination jointly conducted by AICTE and UGC.
