Pune: Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU)on Saturday decided to scan answer sheets of some courses from this session, three years after announcing to go digital.Parag Kalkar, pro vice-chancellor of the university, said answer sheets of students in certain courses would be scanned and uploaded to the Cloud. He said students, after paying a fee, would be able to access their answer sheets for evaluation errors and apply for revaluation. If successful, the university plans to extend this to all courses in phases.“This will not only solve the problem of delay in getting photocopies, but will be a sustainable solution. Moreover, this will reduce the manpower required,” said Kalkar, speaking on the second day of the senate meeting where the management council presented an expenditure budget of Rs623.67 crore for the year 2026-27, slightly lower than the last time’s Rs629.82 crore.Senate members during the question-answer session called out the lack of effort put into answers provided to their questions in written form, creating a furore. “Some answers are just one word, some are incomplete and some are wrong. In some cases, when questions are taken up in the senate meeting, the answers provided orally are different. The questions of senate members cannot be answered this way,” said a senate member.Senate members questioned the university’s decision to allot Rs10 crore for the CCTV camera coverage. Senate member Sachin Gorde Patil and others asked the university to give data on how many CCTV cameras were in working condition and why the university was estimating the cost at an allegedly higher side than required.Another senate member said, “Crores were wasted in laying down optical fibres on the university campus and we are yet to get details about that. Money was also spent to install CCTV cameras across the campus in previous years. What happened to those cameras? How many of them are working? Why has the university decided to pay the maintenance charge for five years in advance rather than every year? Many questions regarding this proposal need to be answered.“Kalkar said there were CCTV cameras on the campus but not centrally controlled. “Some departments have their own CCTV cameras. The university administration, too, installed many cameras. Some of these are not working. So, we have constituted a committee to finalise an end-to-end solution to this problem. CCTV cameras will be installed wherever required covering the entire campus and it will be centrally controlled so that whenever we need any footage it is immediately available. This will also ensure that the footage is not misused,” he said.
