# TUFIII Degrees on sale: Will act against consultancies SRINAGAR: The state government will soon take action against the consultancies that are running fake degree mafia in the Valley, officials said Tuesday, after Kashmir Reader reported exclusively how some consultancies were offering fake degrees at handsome costs. “We will undertake an exercise to find facts about these consultancies, and appropriate action will be initiated against them subsequently,” the Commissioner Secretary Higher Education, Sheikh Mushtaq Ahmad, said. A detailed investigation by Kashmir Reader revealed that the consultancies were offering fake degrees from some universities based outside the state. From simple Bachelors to high profile degrees like MBBS, M Tech, M Phil or Ph D are being sold to anyone who comes looking for it. The consultancies and the universities swiftly manipulate the attendance, results, and other procedures to provide regular degrees to the candidates who do not actually join the universities. The swiftness, and the confidence, with which the consultancies are offering the fraudulently produced degrees is a big question mark on the government’s claims of promoting quality education in the state. The consultancies have been openly running their offices where anyone can buy a degree of his/her choice against cash. There appears to be no check on functioning of the consultancies, which, along with some NGOs, were recently found to be major culprits under the Prime Minister’s Special Scholarship Scheme (PMSSS). In past two years, the NGOs and the consultancies have got thousands of students from the Valley admitted in technical courses in not-so-reputed colleges from outside the state. The students had been promised free education under PMSSS, which they, however, never got, and are now facing a threat to their career. The government recently took up the matter in the winter session of the assembly and promised probe against the NGOs and consultancies. But so far, no NGO or consultancy has been acted against. The Commissioner Secretary, however, said the government has a mechanism in place to check authenticity of the candidates’ degrees. “The government has out rightly banned distance education degrees in the state; no distance degree is considered valid in the state. Besides, the authorities like UGC publish lists of the fake universities from time to time. People should check the list to prevent themselves from being duped,” he said.
Posted on: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 04:07:00 +0000
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