TEST TO VALIDATE ENGG DEGREES OF GRADUATES FROM DEEMED UNIVS

NEW DELHI: Days after the Supreme Court cancelled engineering degrees granted since 2001 by three deemed universities through the distance education mode, the Union HRD ministry has called a meeting of the University Grants Commission (UGC) on Monday to protect the interests of hundreds who could be affected by the move, people familiar with the matter said.

JRN Rajasthan Vidhyapeeth University, Udaipur; Vinayaka Mission Research Foundation, Salem, Tamil Nadu; and IASE Deemed University, Rajasthan — have been conducting distance engineering programmes without necessary approvals, including that from the UGC or the All India Council for Technical Education or AICTE.

The people said that the country’s apex technical education regulator AICTE is considering conducting an aptitude test for students who received degrees from these universities between 2001 and 2005 so that they are not affected.

If they clear this GATE-like test it will validate their degrees, the people added.

GATE stands for Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering and is conducted jointly by some of the country’s best engineering colleges including the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology for admission to post-graduate programmes. The test being considered by the ministry is in keeping with the Supreme Court’s directive.