BHUBANESWAR: Higher education minister Arun Kumar Sahoo on Wednesday warned that stringent action will be taken against students who seek admission by submitting fake disability certificates. The move comes after the authorities of BJB Autonomous College here found that eight students had submitted such certificates during verification. It has filed a complaint with Badagada police station against the eight.
“If anybody is found to have submitted a fake disability certificate while seeking admission to any college, he/she will be punished according to the provision of law. We are taking such steps in the case of BJB Autonomous College,” Sahoo said.
Niranjan Mishra, principal of the BJB Autonomous College, said, “We had sent 102 persons with disabilities’ (PwDs) certificates to the chief district medical and public health officers (CDMPHOs) of 23 districts for verification. Out of them, 15 districts verified the certificates before sending them back to us. Of these, eight certificates from Cuttack and Bhadrak districts turned out to be fake.”
He said the college will send letters to remaining eight districts requesting them to verify the authenticity of the PwD certificates before returning the same to the college.
“According to the government’s guidelines, we have filed an FIR against the guilty students. We will also write to the higher education department to scrap their admission,” Mishra said.
In February, the higher education department had cancelled the admission of 28 students from the Bhadrak Autonomous College for producing fake PwD certificates during enrolment for the sessions of 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22. The process of verification was initiated after the state government asked the colleges to do so with the help of the CDMPHOs.
On January 24, the government had asked the 1,054 degree colleges under the higher education department to conduct verification and authentication of disability certificates of orthopaedic-handicapped (PH-OH) students who have taken admission during the 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22 sessions.
