Nagpur: Earlier this week, principals of state-board-affiliated junior colleges in Nagpur were shocked to see that some of their Class 12 students’ names could not be entered in govt’s SARAL student portal, due to software tagging them as ‘overage’, which also meant they might be ineligible to appear for the board exam through the college. Around three dozen such students from the city had one thing in common — they are all 20 years old.Vidarbha Junior College Teachers Association (VJCTA) members told TOI that they are shocked to know that students above a certain age cannot study in junior college.Ashok Gavhankar, general secretary of VJCTA, said, “I am eager to know through which GR and which rule amendment the govt has banned students aged 20 and above from studying in Class 12. Usually a student in HSC is aged 18. Sometimes students take a drop; some fail in Class 10 or 11, which delays their academic timeline.”He added that if the students are kept out of the SARAL portal, then the only way they can appear for the HSC board exam is as private candidates, outside the college’s ambit.VJCTA’s Nagpur unit president Chetan Hingnekar said, “If students are kept out of SARAL portal, it means the govt does not consider them on our rolls. This in turn impacts the pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) which is the foundation for hiring of teachers and staff roster in aided institutions.”On Thursday, a VJCTA delegation met Nagpur division’s deputy education director (DDE) Madhur Sawarkar, who said their concerns would be forwarded to the department’s headquarters.Hingnekar said, “This can best be explained as a computer glitch because there is no rule which bans 20-year-old students from enrolling in Class 12.” He added that govt controls the entire admission process; hence, the onus is on it to rectify the problem.“Class 11 admission in state board colleges are done through online centralized admission process (CAP), which is run directly by the education department. Students are allotted colleges by the govt’s software and then they come to us only to submit forms and pay the fees,” said Hingnekar.VJCTA thus asked how these students were given admission in the first place. “Students enter their age details in govt’s admission portal when applying for Class 11. So it is obvious that if someone is aged 19 during application process, then he will turn 20 after entering Class 12. The education department cannot deny students their right to appear for HSC board exams as regular students of the college at this stage,” said Hingnekar.Gavhankar said they will wait for a week for the govt’s response and then decide further steps if no response is received.
