More than 50 lakh students pursuing technical programmes across the country will soon get a unique identification number from the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).
The unique ID is expected to be issued to students and faculty members across institutes of engineering, management, pharmacy and architecture among others by the end of April. The aim is to bring in more transparency in academic and administrative processes.
?We will issue the unique ID to around 52 lakh students and around three lakh faculty members by April-end across technical institutes approved by the AICTE. We have asked all institutes to submit data on all their students and teachers by March 31st,? said S S Mantha, acting chairman of AICTE.
The unique identification number will have to be used by students when they apply for scholarships.
They can also use the ID to download any software/service of the AICTE for free. Teachers will have to mention the number when they apply for research, seminars and travel grants. Again, for developing new laboratories or for applying for funds to start new projects, the identification number will have to be quoted by the faculty member.
?The unique ID may also help AICTE to keep a check on excess admissions, if any. Besides, it will act as a deterrent to illegal practices like the same teacher working in multiple institutes,? said a senior professor of management.
Further, as part of its initiatives, the AICTE recently started an auto-generated SMS service for management institutes. This implies that at each stage, the status of all applications submitted by a particular institute or status of each transaction, will be sent to the institute through an automatically generated SMS.
This service has been started for 11,000 institutes initially and will also be extended to other technical institutes over the next several months.