CABINET CLEARS ONLINE DATABASE OF CERTIFICATES

NEW DELHI: The government on Thursday cleared the plan to store online academic certificates of crores of students at school and university levels, a move that would shut the doors on use of fake certificates.

The National Academic Depository (NAD) will roll out all services within the next three months.

It will be in place for institutes to upload certificates issued to students at the end of the academic year.

Human resource development minister Prakash Javadekar said students would be able to get a digitally-signed copy or print their certificate from the database at any point. It would also enable employers to cross-check the authenticity of degrees submitted by candidates and put an end to any possibility of people using fake certificates.

The depository would cut down the time taken for verification of certificates – that takes over a month – to just one day.

NOD FOR DISINVESTMENT The Cabinet also gave an in-principle nod to Niti Aayog’s proposal for disinvestment and strategic sale of several public sector undertakings (PSUS). The Niti Aayog has already chalked out a list of PSUS to be taken up. It also includes a few names that are profit making.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley, said after the Cabinet meeting, each case would be taken up separately and the list will be made public only after they are put up for auction.

“Some of these are important units and therefore since each unit would be considered in its own merit, the timing of that would be decided by the government accordingly,” Jaitley said.