Bhubaneswar: The authorities of the Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT) on Sunday began a probe into the alleged leakage of questions of back paper Communicative English for the first year B.Tech students on Saturday.
This was informed by the BPUT Vice Chancellor Shyam Sundar Patnaik to the media here.
“At the network level, it is very difficult to break the questions from the Cloud server. This system has been implemented in some leading technical institutions like the Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU), Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU), Punjab Technical University (PTU). We have assigned this job to a technical company which is presently implementing the same system,” he said.
He also said that the students with whom the University authorities have interacted are not accepting that they have got the questions through WhastApp.
Replying to a question, he said he has ordered a probe into the incident.
“In view of the integrity of the University, I have formed a four-member committee with the principal of the College of Engineering and Technology (CET), Bhubaneswar as its chairman. The Committee will submit its report in 7-10 days. Since these questions are sent through the Internet Protocol (IP) delivery system, there is certainly the involvement of IP system as they have been uploaded on WhatsApp. If the committee gets any hint of it in course of its investigation, we would hand over the investigation to the cyber crime cell to trace out the location from where the questions have been uploaded so that we can take adequate precautions to ensure such incidents don't recur in future,” Patnaik pointed out.
The BPUT vice chancellor also informed that the University, for the first time, had sent question papers to the examination centres online.
“As per the procedure, the questions are sent to the examination centres 40 minutes before the start of the examination. Later, four senior officials of the concerned examination centre open the online question papers with separate passwords given to them by the University.
“Considering the above, there could be involvement of one of the centres in the leakage of question papers,” he added.
As per the allegation of the students, they were scheduled to appear the back paper on Communicative English at 10 AM on Saturday. However, 20 minutes before the examinations, some students received eight questions of 5 marks each through WhatsApp on their mobile phones. The questions were circulated in most parts of the state within minutes.
Strangely, University authorities, despite being aware of the leakage of question papers, went ahead with the examinations, sources said.