Mumbai University question papers leaked twice in a week

Mumbai: Over 20,000 students of Mumbai University are angry and confused after they were affected by two leaked question papers within a week. Though initially university officials had denied a leak, later they admitted to it, after the police confirmed that two question papers had indeed been leaked. The Mumbai Police have now launched an investigation into the incident.

Two engineering papers, Basic Electricals and Electronics Engineering exam held on May 26 and Applied Physics-II paper for first-year students conducted on May 23 had been leaked. Scanned copies of the Applied Physics-II paper were uploaded on a social networking site.

Dr. Naresh Chandra, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Mumbai University told NDTV "We have lodged complain with the police, the cyber-crime department as well as the BKC police station. And we hope to get the right answers. We have also constituted a committee of our colleagues, a three-member committee to find out the facts. A police investigation is on. Our committee is also working. And we want to go the root cause. And we are taking it very seriously".

According to reports there have been other goof-ups as well. For example, students of the fourth year Instrumentation Engineering allegedly received question papers meant for the 2nd year students. Also there were reports that Question papers are sent to colleges are sent in a CD but the password to access these CDs came in late.

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The Vice-Chancellor of Mumbai University Mr. Rajan Welukar, who met the state's Higher Education Minister Rajesh Tope at his residence and apprised him of the situation refused to comment on the issue.

When asked about loopholes in the system Dr. Chandra maintained, "As far as delivery of question papers are concerned, I have told you we will be using technology to a very great extent. For that we are using encrypted technology. What we have done this time is we have sent the question paper on email, a cd with a password. It has reached the examination centre just one hour before the scheduled start of the exam". He also added "There is always scope for improvement. And we want to improve. We have a dream that all question papers should be developed from question banks".

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Meanwhile hapless students are suffering as a result of the goof ups. One student who spoke to NDTV said, "Since the papers have been leaked, there are chances that we have been told that we might have to give re-exams. But according to me, this is not the right thing because few of us have made plans for the future and they are going to get hampered just because of the mistake of few others who have leaked the paper."

Another student who was angry with the way the entire issue has been handled told NDTV "For these exams, we had studied for months and studied a lot and then after appearing for an exam you come to know that the papers were leaked. And so studying for it all over again, and then appearing again in exam, waiting more for results. So I think people should take more caution and this should not happen again in the future."