The Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) has rejected the admission of 51 students to the first-year engineering course after their National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) certificates were found to be fake.
Shockingly, these admissions were cleared by the state government (department of technical education) during the admission approval process. But VTU detected the fake certificates while giving college-wise approvals.
"We suspect a big scam behind this and will conduct an inquiry into past admissions, too," VTU vice-chancellor S Vidyashankar told DH.
VTU will revisit admissions done based on NIOS certificates in the last five years. VTU will also write to the state government and NIOS on this.
According to VTU officials, during the document verification process, they scanned the QR Code printed on the Class 12 marks cards of these students issued by NIOS. To their surprise, they were taken to a fake website of NIOS.
Students whose admissions have been junked got seats under the management quota and most of them had joined top colleges in Bengaluru with a few in Tumakuru and Chikballapur.
The Bengaluru colleges where these admissions took place include: BMS College of Engineering, Dayananda Sagar College of Engineering, City Engineering College, East West Institute of Technology, Gopalan College of Engineering and Management, K S Institute of Technology and AMC Engineering college.
VTU officials suspect a big racket behind this. "This is impossible without middlemen. It was surprising that officials at the department of technical education overlooked these fake marks cards while approving admissions," a VTU official said.