Several of the University of Mumbai’s (MU’s) third year Bachelor of Management Studies (BMS) papers, held between Monday and Wednesday, were ‘leaked’ on WhatsApp more than an hour before the examination, revealed sources.
While the varsity denied receiving any complaint of the alleged leak, HT has obtained purported leaked digital copies of two of these papers - Logistics and Supply Chain Management, held on Monday and Marketing: Service Marketing, held on Wednesday. The extent of the leak is not clear, but teachers from two colleges in Western suburbs have confirmed that many of their students received the exact replica of the papers in their inbox well before the papers started.
The ‘leaked’ papers belong to the fifth semester BMS examination which began on Monday. While it is not clear exactly which of the five papers held till Wednesday were compromised, the teachers said that their students received the leaked copies on all the three days of examination. “The students told me they received the papers between 9:45am and 10am,” said BMS coordinator of a college in Western suburbs. The papers start at 11am.
A teacher from another college claimed that the papers were delivered as early as two hours before the examination. “On Wednesday, at least half the students had accessed the papers beforehand,” he said.
The university sends the papers to exam centres online through its Digital Exam Paper Delivery System (DEPDS), which was introduced in 2013 in the wake of several paper leak incidents. Colleges receive a password to download the question papers from an MU portal, usually one and half hours before the paper starts. The papers are then printed by the college and distributed among the students.
The two copies of the papers obtained by HT are watermarked with the codes of unidentified colleges. The codes may hold the clue of the place or places of origin of the leak, but a senior official from MU’s examination department said that the codes are ‘confidential’ and are changed every day by the university’s information technology (IT) service provider.
When asked about the ‘leaks’, Arjun Ghatule, incharge director, board of examination and evaluation, and Siddheshwar Gadade, in-charge dean, Commerce faculty, have both denied receiving any complaints.
The teachers, on the other hand, expressed concern over the incident. “The students are suffering due to constant goof-ups of the university. It seems that the digitisation of examination and evaluation process is not serving any purpose,” said a teacher.
