Anna University has no record on sports quota admissions beyond 3 yrs: RTI

Treasurer of Tirunelveli District Athletics Association Ganesh Moorthy, who filed the RTI application, said, “It is shocking to know that the university does not maintain records of the students admitted under sports quota after three years. We suspect whether the records are eliminated deliberately to hide any misuse of the provision of sports quota and to shield those who are behind the misappropriation.”

Ganesh, who had earlier exposed corruption in Tamil Nadu Athletics Association which had collected signatures on blank papers from athletes, filed an RTI petition seeking information on the number of students admitted in the university under sports quota from 2005 to 2018. The application was filed in November 2018, but the information was not provided immediately.

Initially, the petition was forwarded to the Sports Department and from there it was forwarded to the Higher Education Department. The latter, in turn, forwarded it to Anna University and after an appeal, the reply was provided after six months.

However, the University had given the asked details for only three years in its reply — from 2016 to 2018. “Information for the years 2016, 2017 and 2018 are enclosed. Other details are not available in this office,” the university’s reply read.

Ganesh said that the university has not provided information about the students who are currently doing their final year of engineering as it has been four years since they were admitted. He suspects that there is a scam involved in this.

“I suspect that senior bureaucrats have misused form A, B and C certificates to push their wards into Anna University and it could be a big scam. When information was sought, the university did not provide it and the reason they quoted is not satisfactory as it is unbelievable how they could not maintain records even for students who are currently studying final-year of engineering.”