Maha scholarship portal revamped after 1st stumble

MUMBAI: After its online system for disbursing scholarships through direct benefit transfer (DBT) mechanism failed last year, the state is trying to put in place a new system.

The system, designed by the state’s information technology (IT) department, is currently being tested on a small scale. Once proven successful, the pilot project will be expanded to cover all the post-matric and pre-matric scholarships, as well as educational institutes in the state.

“We have built a completely new system, though some platforms of the previous system have also been used,” said SVR Srinivas, principal secretary, IT department. “Before launching such a large-scale project, it should be run on a pilot basis. It will take around a month before it can be deployed,” he said.

After the state launched its DBT portal in August last year, the system faced a number of technical issues. About 30 lakh students were expected to register on the portal. Only 8.34 lakh actually did so. Many did not find names of colleges or courses on the portal while others failed to receive a one-time password (OTP) necessary for completing the registration. Many times, the portal did not accept applications despite mentioning registration number of the required certificates.

The state cabinet later decided to move the application process offline and directed the department to remove deficiencies in one month.

The new portal (mahadbtmahait.gov.in) has been restricted to 227 colleges from across the state. “We have picked colleges from all districts in the state. They are located in rural and urban areas, and cover various streams of education,” said Srinivas. So far, over 10,000 students have registered on the portal.

The state government runs around 40 schemes for students that provides scholarship, tuition fees, examination fees and subsistence allowance to them through six departments — school education and sports, higher and technical education, social justice and special assistance, tribal development and minority development.

The DBT portal was aimed at providing direct benefits to students through cashless means. The state also plans to implement other welfare schemes related to pension, farmers and labour using this portal. MUMBAI: Starting with the winter exam session in October, the University of Mumbai (MU) will do away with the manual process and students will mark their attendance online.

“Marking attendance manually meant more paper work for colleges and MU. With the online attendance system, the process will be fool-proof,” said an official from the department of examination and evaluation, MU.

MU is in talks with the company handling the online assessment process. Last year, amidst assessment chaos, students had faced problem in finding their attendance sheets from their respective exam centres. “Many students, who were marked absent by mistake faced trouble as they had to get in touch with their exam centre, in order to prove to the university that they had appeared for the exam. Online attendance will help avoid such chaos, if at all,” said the principal of a suburban college. While a decision has been approved by the Board of Examinations, an official circular to inform colleges will be out soon.

“Online attendance is a good idea provided all colleges are well-equipped with internet facilities,” said another principal.

Officials from MU said the attendance marking system will be introduced after trial rounds.

SHREYA BHANDARY